013 – The Day My Son Killed My Daughter: Charity Lee

Summary

It's a situation beyond comprehension for any parent, and it's a situation that raises questions like:

Is it even possible to forgive your own child for taking the life of another one of your children? How do you cope with a situation like this? How do you manage to find hope, to find the strength to continue to live on?

Charity did forgive her son, who is currently serving a life sentence in prison, and visits him on a regular basis. [... read more ...]        go to episode

012 – DMT, our Brain and the Prophetic Experience: Dr. Rick Strassman

Summary

In the early 1990s Dr. Rick Strassman, was granted approval to conduct research with one of the strongest hallucinogens, DMT. At the time he was the first scientist in over 2 decades allowed to test the effects of psychedelic drugs on live subjects, and his results were groundbreaking and led him to call DMT the “Spirit Molecule”.

But after he completed his research he still felt that a major question had been left unanswered: Could the vivid hallucinogenic experiences caused by DMT possibly be more than just hallucinations? Rick started to notice that many of his subjects had strikingly similar experiences, regardless of the life experience, culture, or religious background of the person taking the drug.

These experiences are often described as “more real than real”; they’re different to what people experience on other psychedelic drugs.  [... read more ...]        go to episode

011 – The Youngest Person To Ever Solo Sail Around The World: Laura Dekker

Summary

There are ordinary teenagers… and then there's Laura, who at 13 years of age, ventured to become the youngest person to ever sail the planet – alone, without support boats or checkpoints along her way.

What followed was a lengthy legal battle that included Duch authorities, wiretaps, her parents losing custody over Laura and much more… but after a lot of media coverage and public outcry from people including Richard Branson, a Dutch court finally decided in her favor, and the record-breaking attempt finally began on 21 August 2010.

Laura successfully completed the solo circumnavigation in a 12.4-meter (40 ft) two-masted ketch called “Guppy”, arriving in Simpson Bay, Sint Maarten, 518 days later at the age of 16. [... read more ...]        go to episode

010 – The Scientist Who Believes He Can Reverse Aging: Dr. Aubrey De Grey

Summary

Dr Aubrey de Grey doesn’t just believe that ageing, and the suffering that comes with it, can be slowed down – he believes it can be undone altogether.

What’s more, he thinks we are merely a few years away from making the scientific breakthroughs that will enable the medical field to put an end to death related to ageing – for good.

His independently funded non-profit, the SENS Foundation, is at the forefront of radical research that combines the problem solving approaches of technology with geriatric medicine.  [... read more ...]        go to episode

009 – The “Backwords Dude”, an autist with a unique talent: John Austin

Summary

Growing up, John Sevier Austin knew he was different from other kids.

But what he didn’t know was that he had an incredible gift.

One day John accidentally played a vinyl record backwards, and discovered not only that he quite liked listening to music backwards, but that he also found it pretty easy to sing along. This was the beginning of his long journey to becoming “Backwords Dude”, a YouTube sensation famous for being able to speak backwards – which is not the same as just spelling backwards – perfectly.  [... read more ...]        go to episode