Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: And welcome back to Coast to Coast George, and are
Speaker 2: with you back with Maureen Sieberg's book is fearfully and
Speaker 2: wonderfully made and her website is linked up at Coast
Speaker 2: tocoastam dot com. Maureen, who are some of the most
Speaker 2: talented sensors out there? Right now?
Speaker 3: There is a woman in Scotland named Joy Known. She's
Speaker 3: a retired nurse and grandmother and she's working with scientists
Speaker 3: to identify Parkinson's disease, COVID cancer, tuberculosis all through the
Speaker 3: sense of smell.
Speaker 2: Geez.
Speaker 3: She is a super smeller who can detect these things.
Speaker 2: We've heard that some hospitals have had cats who can
Speaker 2: sense cancer and they kind of cuddle up with the
Speaker 2: victim and they know something's wrong.
Speaker 3: Yes, dogs too, but people to and you know, Joy
Speaker 3: explained it to me this way, the back of our neck,
Speaker 3: running down to the middle of our back. There's a
Speaker 3: lot of sebum there, like an oily secretion. She calls
Speaker 3: it a sink and she says so many cents on
Speaker 3: people are right there if we would only pay attention.
Speaker 3: And the way her abilities came to the fore is
Speaker 3: her husband started to smell differently to her, and at
Speaker 3: first she thought it was his long hours as an anesthesiologist,
Speaker 3: but even freshly showered, he smelled off. He smelled musky.
Speaker 3: Six years later, he developed Parkinson's disease, and she started
Speaker 3: going to support group meetings for families and noticed that
Speaker 3: the people there smelled the same as her husband had.
Speaker 3: So she started to raise awareness among researchers. Thankfully they
Speaker 3: listened to her, and do you know, George, Thanks to her,
Speaker 3: there's now a swab test, a skin swab test for Parkinson's,
Speaker 3: and doctors can diagnose it ten years earlier than be four.
Speaker 3: That's incredible, it really is, And isn't it such an
Speaker 3: elegant solution. A woman who just can smell and loved
Speaker 3: her husband and cared what happened to him.
Speaker 2: Can you enhance these senses, Maureen?
Speaker 3: Absolutely? So. What's really interesting is the senses are plastic,
Speaker 3: and unlike other forms of abilities like intelligence, they can
Speaker 3: be learned and grown. And in the last chapter of
Speaker 3: the book, called Vivify your Senses, I walk people through
Speaker 3: ten clear and enjoyable steps on how to expand your
Speaker 3: senses and they include things like simply practice. Joy Milne,
Speaker 3: the grandmother who can smell Parkinson's says, smell everything twice.
Speaker 3: Just doing that will enhance your sense of smell. Another
Speaker 3: step I have is expect all these new sensory potentials
Speaker 3: proven by science should change our mindset about our own abilities.
Speaker 3: And simply expecting these things in oneself and not denying
Speaker 3: them and acknowledging them and using the abilities will open
Speaker 3: you up even more.
Speaker 2: Is science beginning to look at this, Yes.
Speaker 3: Very much so, And you know it's not. It is
Speaker 3: a renaissance, but it's not really declared or cohesive yet.
Speaker 3: Everyone is doing things out in their separate labs. But
Speaker 3: if you take a bird's eye view of it and
Speaker 3: talk to all of them, the things we're learning are
Speaker 3: just astonishing. For example, the eyes being able to see
Speaker 3: at the level of a single photon. So that work
Speaker 3: was done in twenty sixteen here in New York City
Speaker 3: at Rockefeller University and George. The implications of this are
Speaker 3: even greater than being able to see something that tiny
Speaker 3: with your naked eye, because the next steps are they
Speaker 3: are going to see if humans can see entanglement and
Speaker 3: superposition with the naked eye.
Speaker 2: What is that?
Speaker 3: So we can see photons? Right? We can see the
Speaker 3: smallest aspect of light, an atom of light. Can we
Speaker 3: see the activities of physics theorized by the greats in
Speaker 3: the past. Can we see two photons entangled with each
Speaker 3: other or in superposition with each other? Or are we
Speaker 3: going to see something completely different and rewrite the book
Speaker 3: on physics?
Speaker 2: Fact I need readers now to see close up.
Speaker 3: You and me both. But you know what's interesting, George,
Speaker 3: the gentlemen, they were all men who were studied so far.
Speaker 3: They're going to bring women in in later rounds. It
Speaker 3: wasn't intentional, but one wore glasses one war contact lenses
Speaker 3: and they were still able to see this. So what
Speaker 3: they did was put their subjects in what is called
Speaker 3: the scotopic room. It's darker than dark and they were
Speaker 3: in head braces so their eyes couldn't move at all,
Speaker 3: and they were given a buzzer and a new machine
Speaker 3: they invented, shot single photons across the room and they
Speaker 3: hit the buzzer if they thought they saw it, and
Speaker 3: they did. Even the folks wearing contact London.
Speaker 2: Now, if they saw this, tell me the significance of
Speaker 2: being able to do this, it.
Speaker 3: Means that we can actually see the fabric of things.
Speaker 3: That our eyes are so powerful, we are seeing an
Speaker 3: atom of light.
Speaker 2: Wow, what about hearing and stuff like that?
Speaker 3: Hearing is actually our most wide ranging sense. We can
Speaker 3: hear from twenty hurts to twenty thousand herts. So it's
Speaker 3: like the base of a nice stereo that the kind
Speaker 3: of sound that moves your pant leg at a concert,
Speaker 3: or the buzz of a mosquito. And these sound waves
Speaker 3: that we can pick up are also minuscule. They are
Speaker 3: smaller than the diameter of an atom. There is no
Speaker 3: machine on earth who can match us.
Speaker 2: Didn't the lake Marilyn Monroe have some kind of ability?
Speaker 3: Yes, So that was my and my professor's discovery. At
Speaker 3: the Norman Mailer writer's colony, I was up there writing
Speaker 3: my first book about synesthesia, and my professor called me
Speaker 3: and said, you have to pick up Norman Mahler's biography
Speaker 3: of Marilyn Monroe. And I did. I ran out and
Speaker 3: got it right away and called him back and he's like,
Speaker 3: this page, this page, Look what he says about her
Speaker 3: and her first husband actually described her as a cynisthete.
Speaker 2: When asked what that is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so she has bonus senses. And the way he
Speaker 3: described it was she was like a lover of rock
Speaker 3: who sees vibrations when they hear the sound. And later
Speaker 3: I found Monaverey Miracle, who is Marilyn's surviving niece, and
Speaker 3: was able to ask her about it, and she said,
Speaker 3: not only was Marilyn Monroea sinisty, but she is two
Speaker 3: And it runs in families.
Speaker 2: There are lots of them. You say, Billy Joel was one.
Speaker 3: Yes, Billy Joel has such a vivid case of its.
Speaker 3: He he sees beautiful, colorful forms in the air when
Speaker 3: he's composing music.
Speaker 2: And you say, I'm one.
Speaker 3: Yes. Well, the last time I was on the show,
Speaker 3: we got into a bit and it a bit, and
Speaker 3: you realized that you associate color with numbers, which is beautiful.
Speaker 2: Really, I don't know how I do that or why,
Speaker 2: but I do.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, you know, George, they say, we're all born
Speaker 3: that way. Isn't that interesting? And for some of us
Speaker 3: four percent of us, like you and me, this pruning
Speaker 3: doesn't happen in the brain as it's growing, So all
Speaker 3: infants experience the world this way. But we continue to
Speaker 3: and I wonder, George, if you have superabilities that go
Speaker 3: in with that, Like do you do you have a
Speaker 3: very sensitive nose or palette? I know your hearing is
Speaker 3: extraordinary because you're very particular about sound.
Speaker 2: I really never thought about the other things. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: sometimes when it's natural, you don't realize that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Isn't it interesting how we don't talk about these
Speaker 3: things because they're very personal, But it turns out they're
Speaker 3: key to so much. I mean, look what joy milk
Speaker 3: can do, and she can smell covid. Would you like
Speaker 3: to know what covid smells like? I'm not the other way.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: It smells like apple cider plus infection.
Speaker 2: That's not a very nice smell.
Speaker 3: No, it's not. So we should be aware of that.
Speaker 3: And there's a lot more about that in the book.
Speaker 2: What about people who sense death on other people death? Death?
Speaker 3: You know, it's so intuitive that you brought that up
Speaker 3: because I was going to mention it next. A woman
Speaker 3: wrote to me today who had just read the book.
Speaker 3: The book came out yesterday. She read it the first
Speaker 3: day and she said, Maureen, I have to tell you
Speaker 3: before my dad got sick and died with hang freatic cancer.
Speaker 3: He smelled so different to me, and it really touched
Speaker 3: my heart that she shared that with me. And maybe
Speaker 3: this is a conversation we should all be having around
Speaker 3: dinner tables and in the top laboratories in the world.
Speaker 3: If we sense something is off in a loved one
Speaker 3: or in ourselves, we have to speak up because our equipment,
Speaker 3: of my mentor Bill Burschell likes to say, humans are
Speaker 3: soft tech, excuse me, soft tissue, high technology. Our built
Speaker 3: in equipment is so much stronger than other animals and machines.
Speaker 3: And I believe the universe did that for a reason,
Speaker 3: and we're not using it yet, and we need.
Speaker 2: To What about people again who have these abilities? And
Speaker 2: it's not just sensing through smell or stuff like that,
Speaker 2: but you can see auras or somebody who doesn't have
Speaker 2: an or like Edgar Casey had that ability.
Speaker 3: Yes, so it's interesting because or a seeing, according to
Speaker 3: doctor Jamie Ward in the UK, is a form of synesthesia.
Speaker 3: So now they can look at these things in as
Speaker 3: MRI machines and know that people aren't just being outlandish
Speaker 3: or seeking attention, that these are actual human abilities.
Speaker 2: It's very powerful, isn't it.
Speaker 3: It is it is. And you know, for some reason, George,
Speaker 3: we're meant, we're We're conditioned to think that we're not special,
Speaker 3: that there's nothing extraordinary about being a human, even our
Speaker 3: valorization of other animals over ourselves. Like humans are so
Speaker 3: fond of talking about an eagle's vision right or a
Speaker 3: hound's ability to follow a trail. But we are all
Speaker 3: these things and more. And I'm so excited to think
Speaker 3: about a human future where we are the.
Speaker 2: Technology, we could be artificial intelligence all by ourselves.
Speaker 3: We are, My goodness, it came from our minds, didn't it.
Speaker 3: There must be a reason for that, because it's the
Speaker 3: way we work.
Speaker 2: If people have these abilities, what do you recommend they
Speaker 2: do to make it work for themselves?
Speaker 3: Well, there are ways to protect these abilities. So there
Speaker 3: are two things I recommend. In my last chapter, I
Speaker 3: talk about escaping the wonderful Synisy. Steve Roach is an
Speaker 3: Academy excuse me, a Grammy nominated composer, and he tells
Speaker 3: me in the book, you know, we have to have
Speaker 3: a sound diet in the way we are careful about
Speaker 3: what we eat. So there are good sensory things in
Speaker 3: the world, and there are bad sensory things like noise,
Speaker 3: for example, And it's a good idea to get away
Speaker 3: from it all and meditate in silence to protect your
Speaker 3: senses and enhance them. And another thing, George, this blew
Speaker 3: my mind. There's an EPA study from the nineties. It
Speaker 3: was a study that was done because of sick building syndrome,
Speaker 3: but it applies here too. North Americans and Europeans are
Speaker 3: spending more than ninety percent of their lives indoors. Isn't
Speaker 3: that amazing? And it's very bad for our senses. Because
Speaker 3: my counterpoint is these scientists looked at hunter gatherers living
Speaker 3: in Malaysia, and I know that's very different than the
Speaker 3: way most of us live, but it's a stunning contrast.
Speaker 3: The folks they studied there, living out of doors, could
Speaker 3: identify many more colors than we can, could identify many
Speaker 3: more scents than we could. So here we are in
Speaker 3: our cubicles and our airtight houses. Right, just the senses
Speaker 3: are just atrophying. We should be outdoors more. So. The
Speaker 3: two things in answer to your question that I think
Speaker 3: people can do for themselves is spend a lot more
Speaker 3: time outdoors. And when it becomes when life becomes overstimulating,
Speaker 3: particularly with noise. Go somewhere quiet, turn out the lights.
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