What We Lose When We Separate Science From Emotion | Dr. Taylor Cummings

In this episode of Curiosity Theory, hosts Dr. Dakotah Tyler and Justin Shaifer sit down with Dr. Taylor Cummings, educational psychologist and founder of The Self-Love Doc, for a conversation about what Western science gets wrong about knowledge, healing, and the human experience.

The discussion moves from her dissertation, titled The Miseducation of Taylor Cummings, and how colonial frameworks shaped what we call legitimate science, to what happens when you strip emotion, language, and African-centered ways of knowing out of the picture entirely. From there they get into embodiment and why most people have never been taught to understand their own bodies, how K-12 education kills curiosity before it ever gets started, and what self-love actually means when you look at it through the lens of educational psychology rather than a motivational caption.

The conversation also dives into her personal story of misdiagnosis, going on and then coming off an SSRI, and finding her own path to healing through identity and consciousness. She breaks down why depression and mental illness might be better understood as systems problems rather than individual failures, what evolutionary mismatch tells us about modern life, how African-centered and Akan healing traditions offer frameworks Western psychology is only beginning to catch up to, and why carbon, stardust, and the cosmos have more to do with self-knowledge than most people realize.

Chapters

00:00:00 Intro and meeting Dr. Taylor Cummings
 00:03:00 The Miseducation of Taylor Cummings: her dissertation explained
 00:04:20 How Western science stripped emotion and African knowledge from the picture
 00:13:25 Embodiment: why we don't know our own bodies
 00:14:17 How K-12 kills curiosity and what education gets wrong
 00:19:00 What self-love actually means from a psychology perspective
 00:22:00 Her personal journey: injury, community college, and trusted mentors
 00:26:05 What psychology gets wrong about grief and loss
 00:31:30 Her SSRI story: misdiagnosis, medication, and finding her own path
 00:34:06 African-centered healing traditions and the Akan
 00:42:14 Why depression might be a systems problem not a personal one
 00:47:49 Evolutionary mismatch: we were never meant to live like this
 00:56:00 Carbon, stardust, and what the cosmos has to do with consciousness
 01:12:51 Consciousness, energy, and collective connection
 01:25:13 The Decolonize Your Mind resource guide
 01:26:06 Where to find Dr. Taylor

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 Dr. Taylor Cummings | @theselflovedoc

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome back to Curiosity Theory. I am your co-host, Dr. Dakota Tyler, astrophysicist, author, and just curious guy hanging out with my dog and co-host.

SPEAKER_03 0:12

Justin, Mr. Fascinate Schaefer, STEM media producer, lover of all things interesting. And here joined with our special guest, Dr. Taylor Cummings, the self-love doc. She's an educational psychologist. Taylor, you want to tell them a little bit more about your background?

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Absolutely. Yes. I have a PhD in educational psychology. I have a master's in curriculum and instruction, which is also related to educational psychology. And I have a bachelor's in social development and cultural change.

SPEAKER_03 0:41

And we're going to be diving into some fascinating topics today. We're going to be talking about the westernization of science and maybe some alternative takes on what the future of science could look like, perhaps some miseducation and psychosis that is happening in our educational system today and ways that we can think about scientific concepts from a different lens and maybe open our minds a little bit more. And I'm so excited to dive in with this with you all right now. Okay, okay. So Taylor, you're joining us from DC, you said, correct?

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Yeah, I'm from the DC area.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Yep. Northern Virginia. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:26

Okay, yeah, yeah. Northern Virginia, right? So the DMV, technically. All right. And how long have you been out there?

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Well, I'm born and raised in Northern Virginia, but I was living multiple places for school. So I just got back to this area about three months ago.

SPEAKER_03 1:42

Yeah, I think I was telling you before, I spent some time in Alexandria for a little bit. Uh now our studio is primarily in Tulsa. You know, Dakota is based in LA, so we're kind of like East Middle West.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Yep. Yeah. I got to check Dr. Dakota out when I was out in LA for a research conference.

SPEAKER_02 1:59

So we met up at the that secret ducked off cafe. That's my that's my spot.

SPEAKER_03 2:07

Oh, so you can't even talk about it on the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 2:09

Nah, it's I can't even drop it. I can't drop it on the pod. That's my secret stuff. No, but it was dope to get to connect with you. I mean, we've been connected online, and and actually the way that we got connected was interesting. Um, I think I was talking about uh uh my experience being an athlete and then transitioning into science, like into academia, and it was something that resonated with you because you also used to be an athlete and transitioned into academia, although we're in different fields because you your PhD is in psychology, but what specifically?

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Educational psychology, educational psych.

SPEAKER_02 2:51

And you have um the coolest dissertation title that I probably have heard in a while. You want to talk a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_00 3:00

Yeah, so my dissertation was titled The Miseducation of Taylor Cummings. It was auto-ethnographic analysis of belonging in the United States education system and a vision towards healing and consciousness. So within educational psychology, we deal with cognition, how we learn, how we understand, you know, how we process, retrieve, store information, and things of that nature. And I was always really intrigued with how we were socialized through the education system and how we're how we are taught to learn and what we are learning, right? And so, really understanding how we are organized from a Eurocentric socialization process and just really understanding what the process of miseducation was, and just realizing like I went through a system of indoctrination and I want to study this. Like, I really want to understand what indoctrination did to me and my understanding of reality, the world, and myself, and myself in the world. And that was what I was able to do.

SPEAKER_02 3:48

Yeah. So what's let's get let's like dig into that a little bit. In what in what general ways um do you mean by or wait, is that the right way I'm gonna ask it? What generally, what do you mean by indoctrination? When it comes to like Eurocentric, um, you know, Western education establishment?

SPEAKER_00 4:13

So the term I use a lot is conceptual incarceration. That can come from Dr. Wade Nobles and a few other folks, but understanding that we're giving a predetermined set of concepts to make sense of our reality. So even just thinking about English language, that's the only way in which we're able to have a reference of who and what we are and how to describe um and define our experience. And because that is probably not our native tongue, which we know, right, as black folks, as melaninated folks, that's not our native tongue. So really understanding who we are from the core outside of colonial systems. So I'm really interested in understanding who we are pre-colonial.

SPEAKER_02 4:48

Um so the a a little bit maybe like a little bit more abstract and meta of a question is that is under being able to understand ourselves through language at all, because you bring up a good point. It's like if you if you learn a language, the only words that you know are the words that the language has, right? And if there's only a certain number of like emotions or experiences that are describable by the words in that language, then that limits the your your potential understanding. And if I think about going way back in time, like to before uh before humans are even using language, we're still having the same richness of experience and and feelings and emotions. And I almost wonder if you can obviously we can do a decent job of like using words to say what how we're feeling or what we're going through, but I almost wonder if you can if you can ever like perfectly describe any almost anything with language, language, actually.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

I think language has helped us a lot, but it also can be limiting in a lot of ways. And if you think about languages, like you know, the Spanish language, French, all these different languages, they have words and phrases to explain deeper experiences that we have that the English language doesn't necessarily get to. And then if you bring up, like you mentioned, like the ancient traditions, they're dealing with symbols, sound, frequency, you know, and and just thinking about body language too. Exactly. And that's a universal language. Like I can go anywhere and see laughter, I can go anywhere and see anywhere and see tears, I can go anywhere and really see the the human um range of experience and emotions, and that can help you um just resonate. And so I deal a lot with resonance and things of that nature. So um, I think also related to my dissertation was I did it from an African-centered perspective. So Afrocentricity was my theoretical framework, one of my theoretical frameworks. And one of the things that you use, one of the theoretical assumptions, is that uh affective knowledge is a valid source of knowledge.

SPEAKER_02 6:45

And so what do you mean by affective knowledge?

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Effective A-F-F-E-C-T.

SPEAKER_02 6:50

Affective, okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're not dealing with, so we're dealing with the emotions. So I use Dr. Marin Bahani's work a lot, Yorugu, um, and she talks about how Western philosophy, Western science divorce the self, the thinking feel the thinking person from the feeling person. And so we started to understand empiricism, right? Francis Bacon, all these types of things. We started to understand it through logic, reason, rationale, and we really started to divorce ourselves from that feeling part of ourselves that can really help us understand knowledge.

SPEAKER_02 7:20

Yeah, yeah. That's super interesting. My bad, Justin, did you have something you wanted to hop in?

SPEAKER_03 7:25

Yeah, so it I think it's really intriguing, you know, some of the ideas that you talk about. I feel like this is something that comes up sometimes in conversations, like that, yeah, there's these phrases or meanings and other languages. I'm curious in your research, if anything specific came up that was really compelling to you on that front.

SPEAKER_00 7:43

Um, it was more methodologically. So, in terms of what I was inquiring about was motivation and belonging. So I was really interested in understanding self-determination and how you can be self-determined in a system that is counterintuitive to yourself. Um, especially we're thinking we're talking about oppressive systems and how we're navigating those. And then I also was curious about what it means to belong to fundamentally oppressive systems. And the way I went about doing so was not just through my logic, rationale, reasoning, reading books, but it was through my own physical experiences. And then the miseducation of Taylor Cummings came through my use of music. So I used the playlist, the soundtrack of my life, to make sense and code my data. And that was my analytical framework, hip hop hermeneutics. And so it was more so how I used resonance and frequency and just how I was interacting with the music. So during my coding process, after I created a lifetime line of all of my experiences from birth to the PhD, I created the soundtrack of my life playlist, which served, like I said, as my theoretical my analytical framework. And I just would listen to the music and I would just watch myself, record myself, um, just really take note of what was happening. Was I crying? Was I, you know, becoming emotional? What was I thinking about at that time? So really getting into the metacognition of things. So like you're listening to lyrics, what is it signaling to me? Um, what am I feeling? Why am I feeling this? And so really being able to analyze my own self in that way was really where I started to see a lot of the feeling stuff come out. Um, and I think in terms of like my findings, um it had a lot to do with having supportive networks. So one of my major findings was one, not relying on external validation for identity development and how growing up in the school system, that is inherently what we have to deal with. You have grades, you have to hit the mark, you know, you're you're waiting to be told that you're a good student. And if you're not, then what does that mean for you? How are you treated by these systems? You're then cast out, just um discarded, disregarded, and all these types of things. And then another major finding was around the supportive networks that I had. And so me having like these horizontal um like friendships, you know, different sorts of mentors that might come in and out of my life, but then thinking about some of these more deeper vertical supportive networks, like my family and maybe some more long-term. I interviewed my third grade teacher. I was able to talk to my eighth-grade math teacher. I was able to talk to different professors and things of that nature and just understand, you know, what was happening in the love that I had in my life that allowed me to sustain myself despite all of the hiccups and the barriers I had to overcome throughout my schooling experience.

SPEAKER_02 10:13

Yeah. You um you said something a couple minutes ago I thought was interesting, where you were kind of pointing out that especially uh almost a hallmark or almost a badge of honor in science is to think that you can be totally objective. Yeah. And that you can come, you can come through with this like undeniable logic that can't be wrong, and that you have um successfully like removed all of the emotional aspects or anything that could potentially be biased. And that is is just like literally not how uh anybody operates. And you know, the fact that you even think that you can do that is mostly based on a feeling that you have about yourself and like your maybe your intellectual superiority or something like that. So you feel like that's something you can actually do when um the reality, of course, is that you can't, and then what happens when you even try to do that, like sometimes, you know, I think that's that's a good way to go, right? Like you want to you want to try and remove bias when you can, but um, and doing that so stringently, especially in a field like yours, um psychology, which is you know, trying to study like the downstream uh application of whatever is happening in our minds and with our memories of our past, uh, it's like you can't you you can quickly become constraint like restrictive to what um what you're able to like diagnose or you know how valid your conclusions are if you're marginalizing over all these other like sensory experiences that we have and all this other information that is like not strictly academic. And it sounds like a super hard thing to study.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Yeah, I'd say so. I think my dissertation and just my work in general also problematizes that idea of objectivity. I talk a lot about it as a myth, the myth of objectivity, because our reality is so deeply subjective. And as you said, we are inseparable from our experience. You can't divorce yourself from that. Um, and so this idea that science is objective, and this idea that we go into environments um without bias and we go into these that are you leaving yourself at home? Like it just it's not possible, right? And so and I think that's also how science has been used and weaponized against marginalized communities and has further marginalized communities because we use science in this regard when that necessarily is not the case. And so I think it really is a matter of deep subjectivity and like the deeper you go, the more you understand. And like that's we, I think we've talked about this before. It's where the more I know, the more I know I don't know. Right. And that's what allows you to sort of have this openness to the possibilities of what might be, because you're not stuck in, well, this is what I think it is or this is what I feel it is. You're like literally anything could be possible, and it opens you up, I think, to understanding more about other people's realities as well as your own.

SPEAKER_03 13:08

Yeah. Yeah. Another researcher, this is kind of a related but interesting point. Another researcher that we spoke with recently uh talked about this fundamental limitation of AI models and their ability to understand things in general, right? Their ability to comprehend the human experience. And what's lacking often is this term called embodiment. Basically, the physical experience of being a human is how our learning actually works. Like that's how all of our learning is contextualized, right? And so if you're just designing AI tools and training them on the things that we write or, you know, the videos that we make, it's like not getting this world model, this understanding of how the physical world works. Uh, and even like an experience of subjectivity to be able to frame all of these things so that it develops that almost intuitive understanding. Yes. Um, and so like we often can't relate to these experiences of AI tools because of that.

SPEAKER_00 13:58

Yes, yes, yes. And I've been playing with this idea around like obviously artificial intelligence versus organic intelligence and what that looks like and what that means and where that gap is going to continue to grow. Um, but just understanding that we know that our systems, especially with technology, are just trying to replicate what the human body does and what is what we're capable of doing. But because we aren't educated in a way that helps us understand ourselves within the context, um, we don't really understand and we grow up like, well, what do I, what does this have to do with me? Why do I need to learn this? Why do I need to know this? And I think if we contextualize education, especially within the sciences, a lot more people would be intrigued and they would have better knowledge of self because I actually know what my organs do, I know what my function is, and the fact that we kind of think about these things abstractly, like, oh, we don't know our anatomy. You only really know it if you're going into medicine. But it's almost like you should know what's going on on the inside of your body, regardless if you're gonna operate on it or not. And so just thinking how we contextualize the human experience and just make it relevant. And I think that also just helps with that curiosity and just growing that from a young child into your adult years and just thinking about, you know, what do I know? What do I want to know? How do I know it? And just really confirming what that looks like for you.

SPEAKER_03 15:11

Yeah, you know, I think that's I think that's real rap, Taylor. Like um, I had this experience teaching STEM to young kids in the Bronx. This was probably like in 2018, 2019. And I remember we were trying to really make these lesson plans relevant to the kids. Um, because it was almost heartbreaking one time where we were sharing this, we were trying to put these kids into these really cool opportunities to work in kind of like technical fields and things like that. And the kid is like, look, my mom needs help with putting food on the table right now. And like, like with all due respect, sir, like, how is this helping do that? Yeah, you know what I mean? And it's like when your immediate needs are so pressing sometimes, it's harder to even be able to think abstractly or even like engage your curiosity in its rawest form because this, you know, this other hierarchy of needs isn't isn't met, you know?

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Yeah, yeah. And that's what I think one, why I I got into grad school and just even doing all of this because I worked in the K through 12 system. I obviously was a product of the K through 12 system. And I'm just like, there's no reason I should leave not knowing who I am, what I want to do, what I at least have an interest in doing or being when I grow up. And so really trying to understand how we can change just the classroom experience. But I think it also just has a lot to do with mystery and understanding like life's mysteries. And like you said, because we're dealing with so much nonsense here, like in our physical, what we can see, what we can do on our daily social lives. It's really like, okay, what does it matter what's happening in the stars?

SPEAKER_03 16:38

What does it matter what's happening in a hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, no, no, no, I'm I'm with you. I'm with what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

Like, as a I would consider myself a metaphysician, right? I deal a lot with the metaphysics, right? And I understand why that's important for me and my physical reality. But a lot of people are like, what is that mumbo jumbo? Like, I need to know how to, like you said, make ends meet. I need to understand how to eat, how to feed my kids, um, and how to make money, you know, and so a lot of those things kind of get pushed away to the side. But if we think about science and we think about what some of the late greats were doing, they were trying to understand the nature of reality. They were trying to understand how we got here. They're trying to understand, you know, how we're where we're gonna go when we leave. And so I think just understanding existence is another reason I got into all of this anyway. It's just like, okay, we exist. Why do we exist? Um, how do we help others make sense of that? And I think there's a lot as it relates to belonging that I think related to a lot of the existentialism for me, it's like, okay, where is my place in the world? Where do I fit in? Where do I belong? What happens when I don't feel accepted, respected, supported, or included in my environment? And I think the reason why I took the approach I did with my work in terms of an autoethnography was because I realized for a lot of people, when we're dealing with belonging, a lot of the issues come personally when you don't feel like you have this sense of belonging. So then I started to question, okay, well, what does that look like? What does support look like when you feel like I don't have anywhere to go? No one's listening to me, I don't have any support, God's not even talking to me, right? And so I started to really understand this idea of what does it mean to belong to myself. And so that is one of the major contributions that I say my work is making in the field of educational psychology is really turning that idea of belonging to the self and understanding what that looks like and the intrapersonal aspects of belonging. Because we deal a lot with the interpersonal, but really understanding like that inner experience and how we understand just our space in the universe all together.

SPEAKER_02 18:33

Which is what that's what we call intra-personal.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

Yes, that's what I just said. Yep, yep, yep.

SPEAKER_02 18:38

Okay, okay. So intra is like within yourself, and then inter is like me, you, and and just gotcha.

SPEAKER_01 18:45

Yep, yep.

SPEAKER_02 18:46

Um, well, what is can you like say a little bit, a little bit more about that? Um what that uh redefining what it means to like be there for yourself? Like what does what does that mean?

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Yeah, so for me, I think the first step looks like seeing yourself as you are. I think a lot of times we look at ourselves through the lens of other people. We look at ourselves through the lens of society, through our family, through our expectations of self, what we want to be, what we hope to be, what we don't think we yet are. So I think just having radical honesty and truth about who I am and what I am. And if you're like, I don't know who I am, it's time to go figure that out, you know. So I think knowledge of self and seeing oneself as you are, and then after you see yourself as you are, then you're gonna be able to accept yourself. And so I deal a lot with radical acceptance. And so it's less about where you want to be, where you were, but it's like, okay, I can accept what is, I can accept where I am right now because that's gonna allow me to figure out what it is, and I'm not looking to get that recognition or validation from others. Because I think that really can disturb our self-concept a lot of times. Um, like I said, and we know this from sports and other things, it's like, okay, when I'm doing well, it's great. I get a full ride, I get a scholarship, I'm, you know, applause and all these types of things. But when you're not performing or you're not performing to the expectations of others, then it can become a little confusing, and especially if your identity is wrapped up in your performance, right? So sort of just having that radical acceptance of where I am and who I am, and I don't need anyone else to accept me in order for me to feel that level of, you know, certainty. And then I think moving into trust, self-trust is really, really important because that's gonna allow you to act on those inner feelings, experiences, thoughts, and that's what's gonna help you get to where you're trying to go. And so I think it has a lot to do with thinking about how can I, like I said, the definition of belonging is feeling accepted, respected, supported, and included in your environment. So it's like, okay, how can I then show myself that? But it doesn't matter what anyone else is doing, it doesn't matter what anyone else is saying, how am I showing up for myself in this way? And so how am I seeing myself, accepting myself, and how am I trusting myself? And I think all of that sort of comes into this idea of self-love. And I think that's the direction that I'm moving with this work in terms of how, because I don't know that you can teach it. I think there are principles and values and a way of sort of understanding one's identity that can help you get to that point. And so I think it's just really a matter of trusting who you are, what you are, what you know, and how you know it, so that you can act on the things and you can create the beautiful reality that you hope for yourself.

SPEAKER_02 21:20

So let me uh like slow that down a little bit. So you you defined it as um respect for self, trust for self. Sorry, what were the other ones?

SPEAKER_00 21:31

So the definition in terms of educational psychology is acceptance, feeling accepted, respected, supported, and included.

unknown 21:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

And I'm saying, in terms of my work and the framework that I'm developing, has to do with vision of oneself. So seeing yourself as you are, accepting yourself as you are, and then trusting yourself to be what you are. And I think that really leans us into what I'm describing as self love. And understanding how we can navigate in this world, despite whether I feel like I belong or I don't. I can sort of I determine that, right? The environment doesn't determine that for me. I sort of have autonomy and I could decide, do I even want to belong here? You know? And I think that's something that we haven't really grappled with too much in Ed Psych around like our choice and our agency around belonging. And it's always sort of like, yeah, like we're waiting on people to bring us into something rather than us deciding, you know, where we want to be or creating our own spaces for that.

SPEAKER_02 22:33

Yeah, that's almost it's a it's such a um an empowering perspective to realize that you've always had control over. Like you've always kind of had the ability, if you wanted, to shift your perspective, which I I feel like is one of the um amazing things about being a human specifically, is that you know we can we can like choose to have a different attitude, or you can you can you can like try to uh pivot and look at things in a different way. Um, did you how how did you make the transition from sports to academia? Because you mentioned something that really resonated with me, which was the identity being so wrapped up in like performance and status as an athlete, and then like losing that, you actually kind of like lose your whole all the stuff that you um identified with as a person.

SPEAKER_00 23:27

Yeah, I had no choice really, right? I got injured, so I got injured, lost my scholarship, and it was just like what do I do? Like, what wait which sport?

SPEAKER_03 23:37

Which sport were you playing, Taylor?

SPEAKER_00 23:39

I played soccer.

SPEAKER_03 23:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:41

I was a soccer player, and I well, I played a lot of different sports, but that was my main sport, you know. But yeah, I just was like, okay, what's next? What do I do? So I came home to Virginia, ended up enrolling in community college, one because my grades were not the best, and I just needed the time, you know.

SPEAKER_02 23:58

I'm a huge proponent for community college too, by the way. I started in community college as well.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

Yeah, I think it's a great place um to just reset or just to start, you know. Um, but it really helped me a lot. And so I transferred there. And then after I took a few classes, was sort of looking around because I was still trying to play, maybe I didn't realize how like to the extent my injury was. So I was it an ACL? No, it was compartment syndrome. So compartment syndrome is like overexertion of your muscles and it's swelling and pressure buildup in your shins and your calves when you run. So your fascia is really tight. And so there's no room for your muscles to expand. So it was causing a whole bunch of pressure. So my my pressures were about six times what they should have been at rest. Like, but they were six times what they should have been after exertion at rest. So it was like before I had even done anything, they were like, when they did the test, they they stick a needle into your shin to take your first measure. And then they have you recreate your symptoms, like hop on a treadmill or something, and then they'll do the measurement again to see how your levels have risen. And when they first did the first, the first take, it was like, okay, we're we're gonna do that again. And so they did it again. And then they're like, Did you have practice this morning? Like, did you do anything? Did you run this morning? Did you do anything? And I was like, No, I just woke up and came straight here. And they're like, Yeah, well, I haven't seen anything like this in 25 years. I had the Pittsburgh Penns orthopedic surgeon, and he was like, Yeah, you're gonna have to have You're unique. Yeah, yeah. So I was like, lovely, you know, everyone's thought I've been faking and making this up all this time, but no, it was a real injury that I mean I didn't know what it was, I just knew my legs hurt. But I also thought everyone's legs hurt when they ran because my legs always hurt when I ran. So I just thought that's just what it was. Um so after losing my scholarship, after getting the confirmed diagnosis, had surgery, came back to community college. And then there was when I really started to one, my first experience with therapy, because I was like, okay, there's something up. Like my grades are bad, like there's something going on here. And when I went to therapy, I was able to understand I was grieving. And that was my first time really understanding grief outside of just a lost one, like losing a loved one. And so I was like, oh, like I am grieving my identity, I am grieving my life, I'm grieving, you know, what I thought I was gonna be doing. I was grieving so many different things. And so that was really eye-opening for me. And I think that helped me process what it was and to just sort of think about, okay, like what do I like? What do I do? I still didn't really know. I feel like I've always sort of been that way. It's like I know I just want to help people. I don't really, I don't want to be a this thing. I just want to help, you know, and so figuring out where I can go to do that. Um, but essentially I got my associates from the community college, and then I decided to go to an HBCU. I just figured, you know, I was the only black girl on the soccer team at the time. I was at a PWI. I had never really had experiences where I was not one of the few. I was usually like one of the only ones or one of the three to five or six of us. And so being at an HBCU campus would have it changed my life.

SPEAKER_03 27:03

Which one?

SPEAKER_00 27:04

I went to North Carolina AT.

SPEAKER_03 27:06

Yeah, AT. I went to, you know, I went to Hampton.

SPEAKER_00 27:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was life-changing. It was truly, truly life-changing. Um, it really woke me up to just understanding that the world that we had been conditioned in was not, there's more than meets the eye, essentially. Um, I took a course called The Idea of Africa from a professor, Dr. Marissa Dick. She changed my life. I talked a little bit about this on grits and eggs, but I really got to understand, okay, what was happening to black folks and how we kind of got into the situation in terms of like colonialism and all the things that's led up to where we are today. And so from there, I still was kind of like, I don't know what I want to do. I got a degree in social development and cultural change, started going back to work in the school system again. And I was like, yeah, I don't want to be a teacher. You know, I want to do something. I was working with um alternative students. So I was restraining students regularly. I was doing a lot of physical work. It was also just not the best way to approach behavioral issues with students. I'm like, this is not how you help them make better choices. Like, I don't want to be putting my hands on kids. We shouldn't be doing this. Um, so really just thinking about what I can do. And so grad school was sort of the only thing that made sense. Um, and so I went to grad school. And that was really what started my research journey. I found educational psychology as a discipline. I linked up with my previous advisor who was a belonging researcher, and that's how I started doing work with belonging and STEM, actually. My master's program.

SPEAKER_03 28:35

Yeah, that's a that's a really powerful journey. And I appreciate you like spelling that out for people because I think a lot of our audience just may feel like they're into science or science-minded, but doesn't know how to get further along the path, or maybe may want to. So I think that can be super helpful for the folks that are listening. Um, you know what it kind of brings up this idea of is um, you know, a lot of experts in psychology today, uh, I think can be misleading, right? I think for someone that is not academically, you know, and either academically inclined or has been through academia, there's a lot of resources that you can go to that may not have your best interests at heart online, whether that's using AI tools, whether that's people proclaiming their expertise in a field and just getting lots of views and therefore become the expert. You know, I think it can be, you know, as someone that thinks about how to educate people about their mental health. I mean, the resources that exist today are just so conflicting. You know, it's like, like, how do you approach these kind of things, you know, in your field? And, you know, maybe how would you suggest, you know, people that aren't as deep in your field approach them?

SPEAKER_00 29:45

Yeah, I think openness is always the best way to approach something, never going in thinking you already know what you're going to find, but going in very, very open, but also just finding trusted people, try finding trying to find trusted mentors. And for me, it was sort of moving away from Western understandings. Not that they can't coexist in a lot of different ways, but just understanding, okay, if this is a reality that I don't, that's not really supportive of human life, if it's causing harm, if this is the approach that we've taken to healing, to health, to wellness, to community, to all these things, I don't know that we really have it figured out, you know, from my perspective.

SPEAKER_03 30:24

And so I really a quick quick question on one of the things you said just now, Taylor, about trusted mentors. How do you trust, how do you trust someone to be your mentor? Like, you know, and and and in in in regards to mental health, like like this person, like I feel like you could talk to anybody and they'll give you advice on your mental health, you know. Like, how do you think that's more um well?

SPEAKER_00 30:43

Are we talking like a therapeutic relationship or just people in general? Because therapeutic relationships I found that like sometimes it does take quite some time to find the right therapist for you. I've even if they're even if they're an expert, even if they're licensed, even if they're licensed, even if they're a professional, even if, and I will even say my experience with my dissertation, I talked about my own experience with psychosis and I had issues. So I was diagnosed with this thing because I had a manic episode of some sort. I had auditory and visual hallucinations and all these types of things as a result of this consciousness class of me going into an HBCU, learning things that I had never learned before in my life, never heard of these things in my life. I'm like, wait, what is going on? Um, and so this experience happened to me. And so I ended up hospitalized for a few days. I was put on like anti, anti-convulsant psychotics and things of that nature. I was on the medication for about three weeks. Um, and it was actually time for me to graduate undergrad. And so I go to graduation during graduation. My lips are kind of tingly, I'm feeling kind of funny. And um I reach out to the psychiatrist and I'm like, hey, I'm having these symptoms. I tried a new chapstick. I'm thinking maybe it's that. I don't really know. And so I went into the office. They took a look at me, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you're it should be fine. It should be fine. Sent me home. And then I go home, it's just getting worse and worse and worse. I'm breaking out, I'm like red as a lobster. I start breaking out, then my face starts getting swollen. Um, and then I start getting like just dry and ashen, like I came out of a volcano. And I'm just really, really weak. So I can't really talk, I can't really do anything. My partner at the time is really taking care of me. Like we went to the ER one day and they're like, oh, she has scarlet fever. So they sent me home with something and then told me to take oatmeal baths. So then we're taking he's giving me oatmeal baths, and I'm like, we're like, something's like this is he's like, no, she's getting worse. Like I was just getting, I was just really weak. So I couldn't really advocate for myself or speak for myself, or I just felt weak. And then we finally keep going back to the doctor, keep going back, getting misdiagnoses. And then I went to my primary care at the time, and the nurse practitioner was like, okay, we're thinking it's this. Um, they didn't really know, they were still really uncertain, and they really just wanted me to come to the doctor like every day just to keep eyes on me. And then my partner at the time Googled something and he was like, I think she has this. And they looked it up, they ran my labs and they were like, She absolutely does have that. You need to get her to the hospital immediately. And so I ended up having dress syndrome, which is a rare drug allergic reaction from the medication that was given to me. And so, since that experience, I haven't had any issues psychologically. I've never had any sort of mental health diagnosis, I'm not on any medications, and the steroids that they gave me to clear up that reaction worked. And so that was almost 10 years ago in 2017. And um, I'm really grateful for it. And so those were trained, licensed professionals, you know, they were doing their best, but it didn't work for me. And so that's also a reason why I didn't want to go the clinical route personally. Um, and also after that period of time, I did find a black therapist who was great and incredible and helped me work through just understanding and processing what that experience was for me. And then I ended up moving to a different city, and so I was no longer able to see her. And so then I found another therapist. And she used to be an Acon priestess. And so a con is like an ancient spiritual tradition. Um, and she was like, Taylor, if you had known me during that time, that probably wouldn't have gone down like that, right? And so just thinking about just um African-centered practices and African-centered approaches to mental health and healing and how we understand our connection to something larger than ourselves, I think is really important for me personally, and I think for others who are similar to me. Um, and then just thinking about the differences between APA and associations like ABC, which is the Association of Black Psychologists, and just thinking about how our Western traditional approaches to mental health and what we understand as healing and wellness doesn't necessarily meet our needs. And that's why ABC exists in the first place. They broke off in protest from APA and all these types of things. So I think when we're dealing with mental health, when we're dealing with, you know, what's right for you, you really have to be in tune with yourself so that you can pay attention. If you're questioning things, if you're like, hey, this doesn't really seem right, or hey, I don't really feel good on this medication. You have to be able to speak up for yourself, advocate for yourself, have other people in your corner that are going to be able to do that for you so that you can figure out what works best for you. You know, so other people have probably gone down similar roads as me, and it worked out just fine for them. But for me, it was not, and I haven't really dabbled in that in a very, very long time. And I've been great. I have way less anxiety, way less panic, way less all these things that I used to have prior to my journey of consciousness and coming into more African-centered ways of healing.

SPEAKER_02 35:38

Yeah, that's interesting. I had um a sort of similar experience, um, maybe like a decade ago or or something like that, maybe a little bit longer. I took um, I was on an SSRI.

unknown 35:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:55

Uh and it actually, I think it actually worked. Um, I just didn't really like care about stuff. Like I wasn't really bothered by things. Um, bad news didn't really bother me. I wasn't feeling depressed. I didn't feel anxious about anything. Uh, but I and I got like a bad grade on a on a test or something like that. And I just was like not, I just was not bothered by it at all. And I realized that with that attitude and like no sort of motivation of you know, like a fear of failure or something like that, I was just never gonna be able to like get my PhD get into grad school and get my PhD in in astrophysics. So I decided that for that reason, I actually would rather just figure out on my own like how to deal with the way that I was feeling and um you know dealing with my own emotions than taking that SSRI, which is just my experience, I know it's different for everybody, but I do remember thinking that um, so I guess it's a little bit different than than your personal story, but I do remember thinking that if I uh was just living a life that I hated and was not gonna be able to change it in any way and was kind of stuck, that that would be a great sort of magic pill for me. But because I was like uh in this, you know, this period of of building and had these these um you know aspirations of things that I wanted to do with my life, that it was not gonna be conducive to continue taking that. And then, you know, all these years later, one thing that I think has been revealed to me upon reflection is that uh a big part of uh uh at least for me, the depressive feelings came from not knowing who I was, not having a strong sense of identity, perhaps exactly what you said, um, having that too strongly tied to what I thought other people may think about me or how I thought society in general viewed me. And they go away as in my life, I grew more in alignment with what I wanted and was um living and doing the things that were in alignment with what I wanted to do and being able to have the impact that I wanted to have, and being able to like pursue the things that I was curious and and uh passionate about. And it really uh kind of uh drove home something that I'm that I'm hearing you say, which is learning yourself well enough to understand what the right pieces for you are, and and almost not being it and consider and this being considered self-love and all the things that that that means. And it's almost it's almost expected that if you fail to do that, you're not gonna feel right. And um if you uh I like you know, I I I like your approach because what can in some sense, what can a doctor necessarily tell you about that process? Like, sure, you know, we know a lot about brain uh chemistry, and um, there's like this guess and check process that I know that I went through when I got on my SSRI, which was like, you know, they give you a few milligrams of this thing, after a month, they turn it up a notch, after a month, they maybe turn it up again, and it's like, ah, that's not really working, and then they'll they'll switch you to something else. And then there's like this guess and check that seems very closely tied to um uh to brain chemistry as opposed to like all these other things in your life and the way that you view yourself. And so it feels, you know, I don't want to, I know that there are a lot of people who are on various medication that is literally life-saving for them, yeah, right. And so that's something you know for each person to to work through. But I do recall that process not always being um, not really being super um like connected to all the things that later in life I realized make me happy and proud about about the life that I have and like happy with myself and um what I've gone through. So it's it's like it's such a complicated issue. And I'm very glad that you do the work that you do. Um, because a lot of times these fields kind of like push out people who are different, who have different approaches. Oftentimes it will tend to be people who are um like either non-traditional students or people who aren't white, basically. And when that um, like when you leave that that potential for for change all like leaves with you.

SPEAKER_00 40:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:40

So I think it's dope that you do the work that you do.

SPEAKER_00 40:42

Thank you. I appreciate that. And I think you're also bringing up something that's really important around how we treat these things because we're really dealing with symptom suppression. And so that's what those medications are trying to do, is just try to like, okay, we want to just reduce this impact and reduce this effect rather than they don't really know how to get to the root cause. And a lot of what we're talking about with the root cause has to do with those things that you're talking about. What are the other compounding factors and the social factors, especially? Um, because we're dealing with anxiety, depression, panic, depersonalization, all these types of things. And we're not considering our social environment. Of course, people are depressed, of course, people are anxious, of course, people are experiencing these things because look at our world, you know? And so I think being able to not, it sort of puts the issue on the individual rather than the system. And that's the same thing with racism, right? We're trying to solve it, solve it, solve it. Well, like, there's nothing wrong with us, with the people, or you know what I'm saying? Racism is really the mental health issue. Racism is really like what we should be diagnosing people with as a as an issue with the minds and how we're understanding reality. You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_02 41:51

Like, what's the uh what's the prescription you write for a recently diagnosed racist?

SPEAKER_00 41:56

You know what I'm saying? Because it's delusion. I mean, I'm not a clinical psychologist, I'm an educational psychologist, but it's like you're dealing with delusion, you're dealing with all these types of things, and I'm just like, and but then the people who are impacted the most by racism, we're dealing, we're being diagnosed, we're being put on medication, we're being, you know, so yeah, yeah. So it's just really understanding a systems approach, and that's really how I got into this was complex systems. I found an article that was talking about complex systems research in educational psychology and talking about the micro, the macro, the meso, just talking about understanding emergence and how we're trying to create linear statistical models to really get at complex phenomena and that don't do it. We have to be able to understand and research how do we account for that which we can't account for? How do we account for the things that we can't see that we don't know that we so that's what really energized me about qualitative methods too? Um, because I felt like that was going to allow us to get to some of that subjectivity or the unknown and like that relationship between the known and the unknown.

SPEAKER_02 42:54

Yeah, yeah. Uh just to for reference for the for the audience, you mentioned complex systems. And so, like insight, and correct me if I like if I butcher this, but in complex, like a complex systems approach is different to uh than a traditional approach to psychology, which is you know, you think about the early psychologists that we know about that are like trying to figure out what's going on wrong inside of people's heads. And a complex systems approach actually looks maybe at the entire society as a whole and sees instead of each brain as this thing that um necessarily malfunctions, you see that you've created a system where people are kind of like particles in the system and they're moving into the places that the system is like funneling them to go. And instead of maybe giving, you know, thinking of a magic pill cure for all of the for all of the people's brains, you could think about constructing the system in a way that the natural outcome is not depression or anxiety, but is. Feeling whole, feeling connected, feeling purposeful, right? Feeling like you belong. And it's a it's it's almost an opposite approach to psychology than the traditional.

SPEAKER_00 44:12

Because it's trying to really understand things holistically rather than isolating, because that's also what I think the scientific method and a lot of our approaches currently to science do. We try to isolate and control. Like literally, we have control groups, right? So really understanding how we're kind of releasing that and really looking at it in its natural environment. So I like naturalistic ways of knowing. I like naturalistic methods, I like ethnography so I can see things as they are and how they operate naturally rather than trying to isolate and put it here and study it here. But because that's not how it's gonna react in the real world, right? And so trying to understand what that looks like and how you know the parts of the whole. And like you can't, if I'm trying to solve a problem, I have a hole here and water shooting up. I can't I can't just plug this one and leave those, I and then I'm gonna plug this one and leave that, and the water's so it's like you have to really how do I solve the system, you know? And so I think it's really about understanding things holistically within its context, um, and not trying to isolate and control and dominate. Because that's another thing that Western science and just the scientific method was about was dominion, man having to make for nature and wanting to control nature rather be than being in harmony with it. And so complex systems, one of the greatest, I think, examples of that is bird flocks and like how they move and are natural, you know, in their existence, where you don't have a leader, you know, everyone kind of has their own role. Maybe this one's leading at one point and the next one's leading at this point. Um, but just really understanding what that looks like. And no one's trying to control anything, you know, they're just do everyone plays their role, plays their part, and we have to be in harmony um in order to, you know, just achieve what it is that we're trying to achieve.

SPEAKER_02 45:54

Yeah, that's so interesting. Well, something that came in uh an anecdote that came to mind immediately when you um were talking about like all these controls and trying to figure out what's going wrong, um, which you know, to go back to what you were saying in the beginning of our conversation, um, this tendency to try and strip away all these biases and all the all the stuff and have this very discrete experiment and think that you can get usable information about the real world. Uh, it reminds me of the like in the I want to say like the 50s, 60s, there was this issue that most zoos had where their animals they would become sickly and they would die um sooner than the wild counterparts. And it it was like not obvious to the zoologists, the the zoo keepers at the time, because it's like, look, you have veterinary care. This is not even something that exists in the wild. You have infinite food, you're completely protected from predators, you know, you don't have to do anything dangerous at all throughout the day. Um, why are the animals not thriving? Why are they having mental issues? Why are they showing signs of psychosis? Why are they dying earlier and getting sick? And they they come up with this theory, I forget what it was called. Um, some sort of version of evolutionary mismatch where the polar bear evolved to be swimming around the Arctic and have his life on the line every day. That's like the environment that the polar bear evolved for. And when you stick it in a cage, it doesn't matter if you give it all the salmon that it wants and you keep it completely safe. It just doesn't matter because that's not the environment that any given animal was designed for. Or, you know, I get sad, you think about elephants that maybe walk they'll walk like a hundred miles in a day or something like that. That can't be right, a hundred miles in a day, but we'll pack check it, we'll pack it.

SPEAKER_03 47:48

But the theory, the theory is called evolutionary mismatch. That is the theory.

SPEAKER_02 47:51

Okay, yeah. Um, and it's yeah, it's just like you know, animals are not um are not evolved for little zoo captivity environments, and we are also like not uh, I mean, we're all all three of us right now looking at the screen are in unnatural environments where we're like we're not ex we're not breathing fresh air, we're not around plants, you know, we're not interacting with other animals, we're not getting um a bunch of sunlight on our skin. And um, I know that that's actually a huge problem for most black people. I remember at UK, um, University of Kentucky where I played football, they would do blood tests and like urine tests on us to figure out what nutrients we were deficient in. And just about every black uh uh player on the team had a vitamin D deficiency. And I only later learned that vitamin D is something that is produced in higher quantities when you're outside and get more sunlight, and darker skin requires more sunlight to produce the same amount of vitamin D as lighter skin. So that's like just you know, the fact you could make this argument that being having indoors and living life indoors is almost like inherently anti-black. That sounds like a strong statement, but biologically that's kind of true. It's not something that our skin is designed to be able to cope with. And vitamin D deficiency, you can look it up. It call, you know, it can cause a huge long list of physical ailments.

SPEAKER_00 49:28

Yeah, yeah. And it's not a far-fetched thing to say because if you think about anti-blackness, you know, living outside, even just now in society, is not seen as a uh a proper thing to do, right? Just to be outside.

SPEAKER_02 49:43

Um against that, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:45

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think thinking about what who's civilized, who's not, what does it mean to be civilized? What does it mean to create civilization, technology, all these types of things? Um, we've constantly seen that nature um sort of be just weaponized against us in terms of like our relationship to nature.

SPEAKER_03 50:04

Yeah, Taylor, it's it sounds like I don't know why I keep thinking of the Avatar movie with a lot of the themes that you're bringing up. Which ones? Which the blue ones? James the blue avatar. Like, yeah, like how they they kind of aspire to be one with nature. Uh like those ideological values of humans and you know, the nabi people on Nabi, I think that was the name of the planet. Um I'm always calling the name of the planet, the Nabi were the people.

SPEAKER_01 50:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 50:32

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00 50:34

Yeah, and even the sun thing. Oh, sorry, please.

SPEAKER_03 50:36

No, but just like this idea of I think it would be really cool to envision a future where scientists kind of strip themselves of some of these limitations. Uh, and maybe some things are are due to the technological limitations that exist today, like we have to isolate variables because it's very hard for us to observe things in their natural environment and actually understand them with the depth that we can in a laboratory setting. But if you could imagine a field laboratory setting that was as you know robust in its data output and like scientists becoming more one with nature in this kind of way, I think it's a really interesting way of envisioning the future of science.

SPEAKER_00 51:13

Yeah, no, I think so too. And it's making me think of that quote, know thyself and you shall know the gods, and just thinking about the inner space and just the more because we're a microcosm of the macrocosm, right? So I think this idea that didn't they have an idea where it's like everything could fit like infinitely, like super small, like an atom could be have like the whole universe in it or something like that. Is that like a thing? But just this idea that everything exists and everything, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:40

I mean, the scale, the scale scale is like all relative, right? Um, so I there there's I think a lot of unknowns in terms of like we know what's what size that humans are, and we can kind of like think about the universe at the largest scale, and then there's like a a perceived smallest scale where we kind of stop understanding things, or you know, there's like the the the center of a black hole is like another region in the universe that we don't really understand anything about beyond what mathematics tells us, which isn't always doesn't always even map on to reality. Um, but yeah, this idea of like scaled systems, I think is uh is really prescient and significant um because oftentimes what you find as you scale out, as you see similar structures, like um maybe you've seen these pictures before of like what um you know the veins in the human body look like. And there's like these thick veins, and then they like branch off into skinnier ones, and it looks almost identical to like rivers on Earth, and there's like all these little branches and uh tributaries. And if you if you scale back far enough, you'll see that the galaxies in the universe also find that they they follow that exact same distribution where it's like there's these thick arms, and then they're they're branch off and into like smaller little galaxy branches, and there's a lot of um repetition in the structure of things at different scales.

SPEAKER_00 53:17

I was gonna say like fractals is what I'm thinking of right now.

SPEAKER_02 53:20

Exactly, exactly. Literally, exactly fractals, which is it has to do with like um the exponents, these like power laws where things break off at the exact same rate, and so this these like power laws can describe everything from um languages to the your blood in your in your body and how it's distributed to galaxies. It's super interesting.

SPEAKER_00 53:41

Yeah, and it's funny to me, it's like I'm a qualitative researcher, I study motivation and belonging and education and indoctrination and deconstruction and all these things. But through my studies, I find myself back to math. I find myself back to the universe, I find myself back to understanding these concepts. And so I think for me, it really just highlights how interconnected these systems are and how the spirituality, what we might want to call it, and science are so interconnected and interrelated, and how so many systems it felt like me growing up, especially in private Christian school, they tried to keep them so separate in terms of like the Big Bang and evolution and all these types of things and the creation story. And so, how you understand reality, what is your ontology, I think is really, really important in terms of because that's going to help us understand ourselves the best. And I think when you come into this world, especially with Christian programming, you're you're taught to believe falsities, you're taught to believe fairy tales. And so it's really changes the way in which you understand science, and it changes the way in which you understand like your behavior and just who you are and how you interact in the world. So I think to me, it's just very interesting how it's like I didn't set out to be a hard scientist in any capacity, but it's like I always find myself back here, and so I just think it's really cool how we have those relationships within science and you know some of the soft sciences.

SPEAKER_03 55:07

Yeah, yeah, I think that that's beautiful. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:12

Did you have something else you were about to say, Justin?

SPEAKER_03 55:15

Uh I was I was about to pivot to something else. I'm trying to find uh I was pulling back up in the I'm assuming you guys actually no, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:23

That's that's I think that um uh one one thing that I like to do, and I'm um writing a a book right now that will be published sometime early next year, and I like to find uh these kind of like the the lessons that we can pull from what we understand about the physical universe, um, whether that's like the process of stars being born, living, and dying. And um, like a a direct parable that I feel like we can pull, for example, from that right there is the the process of a of a massive star dying, is that you know, this star it spends its whole life uh basically just fusing atoms together in its core. And one day, and you know, you could you could sort of think of a star, like if you just look out or or look at the sun, you know, it's this huge massive ball of gas that's trying to pull itself inward because it has so much mass that it's got this strong self-gravity, and like what prevents it from just collapsing into a black hole? Well, it's because inside of it there's fusion that is creating radiation that is moving outwards, so you've got radiation pointing out, and you've got gravity pointing in, and they balance each other. Uh, we call it hydrostatic equilibrium, but a supermassive star uh one day reaches the point where the radiation pressure falls off a cliff, and when that happens, the star like collapses and then rebounds and explodes, and it completely destroys that star. And if there were any planets, they would get vaporized in the explosion. So it's like the complete destruction of that star creates in the aftermath uh like a lot of the molecules that are probably in our bodies right now. Um, gold, uh, silver, platinum, very important metals to creating a new planet in the future. And it's like we find through understanding stellar evolution and planet formation and the the ingredients for living things that they can only be produced in the amount in the quantities that are needed in the destruction of stars like billions of years ago, which I think is very cool and poetic because you know, oftentimes in life that is not how we tend to feel about things. That's not like how we're taught to think about failure or pivoting or starting something new. But in you know, for life literally itself to exist, you need a bunch of things to be destroyed and changed forever. And it's only in that aftermath can you make it make the sun, the earth, and then have cows on our on the planet and bears and humans that can you know have podcasts and that sort of thing. But it did it doesn't work if you skip that that uh step of destruction.

SPEAKER_00 58:21

Yeah, I was actually gonna mention that earlier when you were talking about your own journey, because I do think in the struggle, in the fire is where you're made and understanding when you're going through those things, those tough times, is really where you can come out anew. And so it's making me think of like alchemy and all those types of things. And I think even now as I think about like autoethnography and like my approach to work, like research in terms of knowledge of self and how it always leads us back to space, it's making me think of carbon, especially as you related like the vitamin D conversation and solar stuff. Maybe this is separate, but just thinking about how carbon is a building block of our reality. We have, you know, these things, these parables around like 666 and this type of stuff, right? And understanding what that looks like and what that means in terms of genetic makeup or how things are organized. But it's making me think of, I don't know, is it the triple alpha process of how carbon is triple alpha, yeah, process inside of stars?

SPEAKER_02 59:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:13

So my understanding is that process is the same process in which carbon is created.

SPEAKER_02 59:20

Yeah, that's one, yeah, that's the main mechanism that carbon is created inside of stars. Yeah, uh infused, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:26

Okay. And it's like for me, it's like as someone who's not trained, you know, traditionally in this in astrophysics, obviously, it's like I'm like doing all this research in terms of like blackness, um, our relationship to nature, science, our approach to science. And it's like these concepts are coming up, and I keep finding myself in DNA. I keep finding myself in this triple alpha process. I keep finding myself here and trying to like bring these worlds together and make sense of like, okay, what's actually going on? You know, what's actually happening? And I think there is something to be said. I think it also goes back to what we're talking about, how we teach things within context, right? Um, but I think I guess I'm curious, maybe I'm asking questions now, but like, what's your take on what that looks like and how that may be related to us as human beings and the significance of that?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:18

Sorry, could you ask the question again?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:22

I'm asking, what is there any significance? Does that matter? I don't think coincidences exist necessarily, but what do you think the similarities are between that process of a star and that process of carbon and how it relates to like our physical reality?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:38

Um, you mean like the process by which carbon is created inside of it?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:44

Yes, but then also in terms of well, I guess the question is the carbon in the star, is it the same carbon that we have here? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:53

I mean, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:54

So then in terms of like how we came to be, how is that? What is the connection there?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:59

I think I think the the connection, oh my bad, Justin, you and I were you about to say I was just saying, uh I mean, if you're just talking purely scientifically, yeah, the the carbon that gets created in the compression of the star, uh, yeah, that is the carbon that is in us today. So yeah, there are like dead stars that we are made of right now, currently. So basically the only way, yeah, good, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:22

No, I was just saying is the only way that we know to get these heavier elements that you know, carbon keep going up magnesium, silicon, uh, iron, like you know, we have iron in our in our blood. The only way to get these heavier elements is in these various processes that happen within stars. And you you know, you point out um something good carbon-based life, right? It's like that's how life on Earth is is built. It's built off of, you know, at the if you if you keep zooming in, right? You see that, oh, animals have cells. And if you keep zooming in, then you see that those cells are made up of a bunch of different little molecules. And if you keep zooming in all the way, you'll realize that the molecules are all based on carbon connections, so it's little carbon atoms that are connected with other atoms, and carbon is like the glue that holds all of it together, and there is one way that we know to produce a whole bunch of carbon in um the universe, and it's through these processes that happen in stars, and you know, carbon doesn't just make up us and plants and in life, but the rocks, like a lot of the rocks, it's everything, like what 90%, it's everything, yeah, it's all over the place, like 98%, I think, or something like 96 or 98. I don't know, I don't know the exact percentage, but yeah, it's like it's all over the place, right? It's it's it's everywhere, and it came unequivocally, like unquestionably, it came from stars that were doing their thing a long time ago and like exploded at some point in the past, which is a dire I mean that's oh that's about as direct of a connection as you can as you can get, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:07

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:08

Like if that doesn't happen, we don't happen.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:11

Yeah, quick quick fact check there. I thought that was interesting, Taylor. So carbon makes up about 18% of human body mass, yes, and it's only about 0.02 percent of the total planet's mass. Okay, we are like most organic matter, other species on the planet are accretions of carbon, yeah, that are the glue that holds us all.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:31

Yeah, so that's like a what is that, like a fourth or a fifth, and I I guess most of the what's in the human body is probably oxygen by mass, because so much of our body is water, so we're probably um by mass mostly oxygen. I want to say, is that true?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:46

Let's see what percentage I remember this.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:49

Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus. Phosphorus is also related to Lucifer, the light bringer, which I always thought was really interesting. So I don't know if you guys have any uh thoughts around that and what that looks like.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:01

I don't have it, I don't have a take on that. I also don't have a take on that, but don't be scared, don't be scared. Oxygen, uh related note, oxygen does make up 65 percent of uh by mass, right? Yeah, of the human body, give or take. Yeah, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:21

Obviously, because of water, yeah, yeah, it's because we're we are made up of so much water, and oxygen is a huge part of water, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:27

Which is also you know how you're gonna make fuel in the future, like water. The I was looking at this, this is uh kind of interesting too, like the moon missions and how they want to source water as breathable oxygen, a source of fuel, and obviously a source of water for people to survive. Uh, it's got so many uses, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:46

And uh, same thing with the oxygen, though. Like oxygen, it's also something that's produced uh by stars and the explosions of stars is how is it like how it kind of like gets spread throughout the galaxy for future um star systems and planets and and that sort of thing. So it is uh it's it's very interesting, yeah. All of this stuff came from these other processes of that ended in destruction, yes, elsewhere in the universe a long time ago.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:17

And uh you could never predict, you know, if we you if we could get in a time machine and we could trace back, Taylor, uh, some of the carbon in your in your hand, your right hand right now, if we could somehow magically trace back to the explosion that led to that carbon, um, and we could watch it, we would have no way of knowing that that was ultimately one day going to be in the right hand of Dr. Cummings. Like we we don't know that it could have gone a mini, a bunch of different ways. It could have just floated in space forever and did nothing, it could have landed in the sun and just been a part of the sun, or it could have landed on a planet that was like hellish and would never have life. Um, but there was a possibility. There was a chance they was gonna end up in a living, breathing, conscious being that had creative thoughts and you know was a lover and educator of people, and that is true for some of the carbon in your body, which I think is like fascinating.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:15

Yeah, I guess another one that kind of can mess you up. Uh, the water that is in our bodies is probably some of it has probably been drank and peed out by dinosaurs.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:24

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:25

Guaranteed, actually.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:27

Yeah, that we there's so much water and there's so many molecules, it's like guaranteed that that has happened, I think.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:33

Yeah, I guess what would be the percentage, you know? That'd be interesting. Yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:40

I don't know. I'm trying to figure out why you guys are afraid of phosphorus right now. Why y'all not trying to go there?

SPEAKER_03 1:06:46

Oh, the molecule. I uh yeah, I'm not afraid of the molecule.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:49

It's important in our bones, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:06:51

Phosphorus is yeah, and ATP. ATP, so yeah, bone structure, um, but yeah, it's connection to other things. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:00

You were saying it's go ahead, say what say it, say, ask it again.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:03

They say it translates to light bringer, right? Which is also related to Lucifer and Venus, the morning star, and all these types of things. So when we talk about different stories that try to make sense of our reality, where do you see those connections or how do you see those connections?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:19

Because I feel like the name phosphorus come from. I don't know, I'm not even sure. Is it like ancient Greek or something?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:25

Well, you know, whenever you go to any sort of etymology, they always start with Greece.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:29

Yeah, yeah, they we gassed them up way too much, honestly. Like they're the only ones that knew anything ever, is kind of what it is.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:37

And that's what my work literally looks at is the African origins of Greek philosophy. Um, so sort of bringing us back to you know where we came from. Yeah, so it's like as because on my journey, it's like like I said, I'm trying I'm piecing these things, and it's like, okay, there it makes sense, like it's there's something here. So where are we going with this?

SPEAKER_03 1:07:58

So yeah, I just oh you got you got it. Yeah, from an etymological perspective. Um the reason that the phosphorus and light bearer are kind of used synonymously is because ATP is what phosphorus is kind of responsible for being a you know, it's it's part of the building blocks of ATP, which gives us the energy, which light and energy are kind of goes back before that because it was named before that, I think.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:24

But I found what here's what I found ancient Greek light bearer. So exactly what you said, bringer of light, whatever. Um, in phosphorus has this ability to glow with a dull white light um when you expose it to oxygen, yes, and that this was something that has been known that was actually known, like you gotta go back hunt more hundreds more years before we know about like DNA and ATP and molecules and that sort of thing. So that makes sense though, right? If they know that this thing glows white, they would name it after the light bearer. Which are you saying is that also an a um analogy analogous name for Lucifer as in like Satan?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:06

Yes, that's typically how it's described.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:09

Yes, yeah, yeah. But this name makes sense to me.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:12

Like, I mean, it brings light if you it glows, like yeah, and like similar to Jesus or how we understand a god, like the solar sort of origin or relationship to it.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:23

Um, so I was just curious from like a scientific perspective, what that meant, or how I mean, I think that the Greek usage of of these names, I think, is typically not much more deep than to explain something about it, like um the uh the Apollo missions, you know. Apollo, I forget the Greek story of Apollo, but something to do with it. They sort of like mix match the interpretation. But yeah, I mean, in in terms of, well, what's your set what's your I think I'm gonna save it.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:55

I'm working on a couple of things, so I think I'ma I'm gonna save it because I really do think that in terms of like I said, my understanding around ancient African traditions, how we understand Greek, Roman, like where we're at today with like Christianity and all these types of things, there's a lot of similarities that really just explain astronomy, that explain anatomy, that explain biology and all these types of things. And so trying to figure out, like I said, going back to that quote, know thyself and you shall know the gods. So understanding what does curiosity lead us to, what does knowledge of self lead us to? What are the great mysteries or my story, right? Of who and what I am. And like I said before, like education is there to help us understand a few things. Who am I? How did I get here? What am I doing here? And what am I doing when I leave? And so I think trying to find a roadmap for people who were similar to me who had a lot of questions and we were reared in Christianity, um, and then feeling a little lost or confused when things stop making sense. And so when you start to see how these things are interrelated, or you start to see a little bit of similarities between language and words, which may be very much intentional in terms of how the Bible was constructed, how it was written and things of that nature, especially as we talk about English language, but just thinking about okay, what is the larger purpose, right? What is the larger meaning? What meaning do we then take from it? I don't know if we're going a nihilistic sort of route where there is no meaning and we we just live, we die, and we go back to the dark, the blackness, or if we're thinking about universe making and maybe going into new realities and things of that nature. So I think for me, I'm very most interested in helping people understand themselves, but also trying to figure out just a safe way to explore these topics because you can lead yourself to psychosis, you can lead yourself to um depression and anxiety and all these types of things, trying to figure these things out. But I'm finding as I'm trying to make sense of just the black plight in America, you have to address government, you have to address religion, you have to address education. And then it's like I keep running up against these concepts, I keep running up against this in science. And so then it's like, okay, what does this really look like and what does this really mean? And so I've had to seek outside of Western understandings to sort of have a more contextualized perception of what this all means and how our ancient ancestors were making sense of these concepts. And so now I think in terms of um modernity, like how are we bringing that now to this day and age 2026? What does this mean? How do we make sense of this? You know, so I think I have a few theories, I think I have a few inklings, and so I was I was just curious like what it triggered in you, what you thought of it. And so I that's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:45

I'm curious to what it's triggering in you and what you thought, what you think of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:49

Well, well, because I deal a lot with consciousness, uh-huh, right? And so I'm thinking in terms of our existence, how we got here, where we're going. And if we're thinking about that trajectory, how can understanding astronomy, how can that help us better understand what it is that we're doing, if that makes sense, um, in terms of purpose. I don't think I think our purpose is to just be. I think our purpose is to just exist, right? But I think there is something deeper about our experience here, especially if we know from a quantum reality that this isn't necessarily what it is that we're dealing with physically, right? So I don't know. I think there's a lot to be said just in terms of understanding how consciousness manifests itself and what it is that and how we use consciousness to improve human condition, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:13:44

Um what does uh what does consciousness mean to you? Like what does it mean to be conscious?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:50

Um, I think it can mean a couple of things, right? So in terms as a black person, I think it has very um specific sort of conditions in terms of consciousness, like coming out of you know, your social programming of subjugation and seeing yourself through a lens of subjugation, seeing yourself through a lens of oppression, seeing yourself through a lens of black and white, um, and having to really come up out of that. And so it's almost like waking up, you know. You talk about waking up from sleep from your slumber. And for me, it was really becoming yeah, say what and it's so crazy you say that because that song played in my head during my psychosis.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:28

I was yeah, and it means something, it's used uh by like what you know, white people, and yeah, I guess just in general, it's oftentimes used like as a pejorative now, it's used to as like a almost like a slur, but it meant something, and you know what I hear you describing is like this conscious, this like social awareness, yes, of these of the systems that we're in and like how they were built and what they're designed to do.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:54

Those are levels, and then I think there's another layer where you come out of that and you start to understand okay, race is a social construct. So I'm not black, I'm not African American, I'm not what are what are these types of things, right? Understanding what that means, but then we understand black Kemet, the triple black darkness of space, the waters of noon, where we came from, primordial waters, like all these types of things, like understanding what that really means and understanding consciousness, I think from a more metaphysical space, I think you can arrive there regardless of you know who you are. Um, and so I think for me, if you talk about realms of like meditation, right? Why is that so significant? Why is that so important? What the gray matter in our brain, the white matter, what are we really, what's really happening here in terms of our experience? And so you talk about I deal with transpersonal psychology. So I deal with like transcendental experiences, and some will say, no, that's not really real, some will say it is, and those who have experienced that, you can't deny your experience. And so I think consciousness, we have a collective consciousness that we're aware of that we all can tap into that really does impede and impose itself onto like our reality and our experience. But I think there is still like an individual experience that we have, that interpersonal aspect of consciousness. And so I think I don't know, I think it's a matter of just understanding like the interconnectedness of it all in terms of like how you know self and how you are me and I am you. Like it's understanding what that really means in this whole grand scheme of things, I think. Um, and when you understand or you see God and everything, you start to treat it differently, right? You have more respect for you have respect for nature, you have respect for your brethren, you have respect for yourself because you understand the the importance or the significance, and it doesn't have to do anything to earn that. Um so I guess that's what consciousness would mean to me largely. Like I think it's layered as a marginalized person in society because you're dealing with like class consciousness and social consciousness on top of like that metaphysical experience of consciousness.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:07

And so do you so that sound so that's like very specific to humans that have a certain experience, but do you think of consciousness like beyond that? Like, I guess maybe what I'm asking is is consciousness something that you think that only humans have, or is that something that like other animals have, or uh um maybe like plants?

SPEAKER_00 1:17:34

I think plants, yes, I because we're very similar, like right, chlorophyll and carbon are essentially similar, like very, very similar.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:44

I don't know much about the chlorophyll complex molecule. Carbon is like more of an element, so carbon is like a building block, and chlorophyll is like um what is produced by chloroplasts, which are like yeah, the ours would be built of chlorophyll, then is built of a bunch of carbon in the same way that like all the other stuff is built.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:03

So, what about chlorophyll? What about chlorophyll and melanin? Because I think there is an article that discusses chlorophyll is to the plant kingdom as melanin is to the animal kingdom, and talking about so like if you have like okay, like George Washington Carver, he spoke to plants, right? You talk to the trees. I think we have this shared consciousness. I don't know if you're a tree hugger or a tree talker. I am one of those.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:27

I've never talked to a tree, but I talk to myself a lot.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:30

Okay, okay. And I think it's pretty similar. Talking to trees is pretty similar to talking to self. I would say, like yes, I'd say things that are not just human beings have consciousness. I think there is a different level of intelligence that human beings have that animals may or may not have. If you just think about like the deer, the deer runs into the road and gets hit by a car. Maybe that's you know, just thinking about decision making and intelligence and things of that nature. But consciousness, I'd say generally, I do think that we have a different level of intelligence, though, that we're dealing with.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:03

Um, Taylor, I think one of the interesting directions uh with this kind of uh research is in mycelial networks. We kind of talked about this on the show. I don't know if you're familiar with the term. Um mycelium is so basically uh fungus, right? Like the the fungi, you know, part of the animal kingdom is like really, really complicated in ways that we're just starting to understand with research. Like a lot of um, there's a documentary, I think Dakota, you and I both saw it separately at some point, but there's like my these networks, mycelium is basically fungi. And there's these networks of mycelium that kind of exist in between root systems of trees, and they're like this connectivity network uh where like different resources are exchanged across miles, yeah. Uh, and so it's like a fascinating undercurrent that's happening in nature that we're just beginning to explore and understand. And you know, they again uh we've also kind of defined consciousness on this show a few times, okay. Um, and kind of in terms of like axes or modalities of awareness, right? Uh and so like humans, you'd say, oh, you know, one way of looking at it is that because we're human and our brains are as complex as they are, that we have and you know, we're we're well fed and well-nourished, that we have these, you know, substantial number of axes of awareness. And you know, mycelial networks, you know, while maybe don't they don't have the same neuron count that we do inside of our brains, like they can be these interconnected chains of uh you know incredible size and scale. And so their awareness is different from ours, but perhaps you could still argue it's a form of consciousness.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:44

Yeah, and trees do, uh, you know, to your to your point, Taylor, trees communicate with each other. They they like so you have a tree that has all these complex roots, and then there's all this fungus that has even more complex connectivity between them, and the trees can like send nutrients through the fungal networks to other trees that maybe aren't getting it, right? Or they like aren't getting enough water or something like that. And so there's this like vast complex communication networks and you know, underground in forests that we have like we have that we have like no idea about you know what's being communicated or how are these decisions being made. Yeah, and it is uh it's a fascinating thing to think about um because we're you know we're like so different than plants that um it's just it's hard for us, I think, to understand what their experience is and like what the things that they are doing. Yeah, like what are they doing?

SPEAKER_00 1:21:40

Yeah, yeah. But I think it's also making me think of like electromagnetism and just how we radiate that and plants do, and we just have this way, like energy and frequency, and understanding how that is a way of communication. Like we're kind of going back to the beginning of our discussion around like the things like the unspoken language that we have, you know. And I think energy is definitely something that we read, you know, we can pick up on that. Our energy communicates for us, and I think that's another way I would describe consciousness is through understanding electromagneticism, understanding how our aura, if you will, or how our energy sort of speaks for us, you know, prior to us even having to be in the same room space or even geographies, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:27

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:28

I've always thought of uh so I guess this is a little bit more psychological, but when people, when like you walk in, you could like pick up on somebody's energy. And I always wondered if it was you know, your brain again, like now we focus on language so much that we maybe we've like lost a lot of the other um sensory abilities that we have to extract like information about the environment. And like if we're in a conversation, maybe I'm subconsciously my eyes are like picking up on the way that you're postured or like slight uh facial expressions that you're doing, and all of that like compounds to me feeling like your energy is off, or feeling like your energy is like on and we're super connected, and there's all these, there's just like so much going on that we couldn't even begin to to really like write it out and and parse it out if we wanted to, and so but it a way that we talk about it is like that person's energy, like the vibe that they have.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:35

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:37

Yeah, that's uh I don't know, that's always kind of how I've thought about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:40

It is, and sometimes people impose that, you know. I think this whole empath thing, everyone's like, I'm an empath, I'm an empath, I can feel everyone, I know what you're thinking, and then it's like, yes, sure, you absolutely do. We feel each other, we can feel, you know, others, we can have empathy, we can have all these types of things, but I think sometimes it is people imposing their own thoughts, and sometimes what I think has a lot to do with just consciousness, spirituality, energy, and being able to read those types of things, you kind of have to like it's not about you, you know, and it's like it's a real like in tune, harmonious experience of like this is just the information, this is just the knowledge, this is just what I understand and what I know. And then, and these are spiritually gifted people, I'd say too. This is how you kind of start to understand, like, if your gifts are accurate. If I do, if I am able to read people's energies, if I am able to see people's vibe, because then you kind of start to share, oh yeah, this is what I thought, or this is what I picked up on, this is what I saw. And they're like, dang, like you were right, you know. So you can start to understand, like, am I making this up or am I on to something? I think about that.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:43

Yeah, super interesting. Um, remind me, are you do you have a do you have a book or you have some resources that you want to plug?

SPEAKER_00 1:24:52

Uh, yeah, so I do have a I'm working on a book. Working on a book, about a few articles. I am working on uh um a special issue actually on cognition and metacognition and how we're understanding that from an African-centered perspective within educational psychology. I am working on publishing things for my dissertation, but I do also have a compilation of resources. So I did put out a decolonize your mind resource guide that has different scholars from an African-centered background. Um, there's a lot of different folks. There's actual Dr. Gabriel Oyebo. I would actually be really, really curious about your guys' perspective on him. So I'm gonna send some of his work to you because he deals with essentially Einstein's work, but he has extended that. Essentially, what Einstein was trying to understand and figure out like this grand unified theorem, he has an equation for, which they're saying is coming from the Shibaka stone. So another sort of connection of like ancient African tradition and how we understand science. So people like that. Um, there's a lot of different folks if you're interested in history, pre-colonial history, if you're interested in religion and things of that nature. It's over 150 lectures, over 75 book recommendations. You can click through it. And yeah, it's on my website at theselflovec.com. But definitely Dr. Gabriel Oyibo. I would definitely be curious to see what you guys think about his work.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:15

Yeah, dope, dope. Well, it's been we're it looks like we're coming up on about an hour and a half. Uh, it's been excellent talking to you. You have a super I just love your unique approach and perspective on this entire field that sometimes it feels like we pretend that we understand so well when I think the reality is that we actually don't. And a great um illumination of that is you know how you conduct a psychological experiment and you know how you can try to control for all these things that like removes the reality and you know what you can actually say scientifically when you do that, when you study these things in there in an abnormal environment. Uh super cool. Love your love your work and glad you were able to come on.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:06

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me. This was really fun.

unknown 1:27:10

Definitely.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:10

It's been a pleasure, Taylor. And as always, thank you all for tuning in with us. Like we love to say, stay curious. Stay curious, peace, peace.