This becomes a wider discussion about art, the body, the voice, and the tension between making a living and making something humanly meaningful. The episode explores the economic fragility of artistic work, the traps of visibility, the limits of platforms such as Spotify and YouTube, and the need to rethink support for artists not as donation, but as a form of payment, care, and cultural responsibility.

The second half of the conversation moves through voice activation, AI, plant medicine, healing culture, and the search for something more grounded than performance. Lidia explains how voice can become a doorway into the body, memory, fear, and self-expression.

The dialogue also questions modern promises of healing, redemption, and salvation, whether they appear in religion, spirituality, self-development, or psychedelic culture.

Related Links:

• The Blue Planet

• Boom Festival

• Patreon

• Ko-fi

• Substack

Key terms in this episode:

• Voice activation: A body-based practice in which the voice is used as a way to explore tension, fear, expression, memory, and self-alignment.

• Healing culture: A modern field of practices, workshops, ceremonies, and narratives that often promise transformation, relief, or self-discovery, but can also become a form of escape or commercialization.

• Plant medicine: A term often used for psychoactive substances used in ritual, therapeutic, or spiritual contexts, especially in relation to ceremonies connected to Indigenous or neo-spiritual practices.

• Embodiment: The idea that experience, emotion, memory, and self-expression are not only mental but also deeply rooted in the body.

• Coping mechanisms: Coping mechanisms are the conscious and unconscious thoughts or behaviors you use to manage stress, anxiety, and difficult emotions. They fall into two main categories: adaptive strategies (which promote well-being) and maladaptive strategies (which can provide temporary relief but cause long-term harm).

• Ready-to-hand and present-at-hand: Heidegger’s distinction between things we use without noticing and things that become visible to us when they break, disappear, or stop functioning smoothly.

• Following mode: In Martin Heidegger’s philosophy, a “following mode” relates to how humans interact with the world. It typically describes either the passive, thoughtless following of societal norms, or the active following (repetition) of history and possibilities that make authentic living possible.
  

As the conversation develops, Belarus and Iran become two different entry points into a wider reflection on power. The discussion moves from authoritarianism and political repression toward totalitarian control, religious rule, oligarchic power, and the way regimes justify violence through the language of security, religion, democracy, survival, or destiny.

The conversation eventually reaches a deeper moral question: what is the value underneath democracy, freedom, and political systems? The discussion turns toward suffering and empathy. Human beings often try to reduce suffering for their own group while increasing it for others. This is the seesaw of suffering: the mechanism through which nations, regimes, religions, and ideologies protect “us” by dehumanizing “them.”

Episodes related to the two-volume Neurophilosophy:

• Morality Ladder

• Metaphysical Fascism

• On Why We Fight

Figures mentioned in this episode:

• Alexander Lukashenko

• Hannah Arendt

• Karl Popper

Key terms in this episode:

• Rusification

• Authoritarianism

• Totalitarianism

• Theocracy

• Oligarchy

• Theo-oligarchy

• Open society

• Democracy

• Dehumanization

• Umma

• Jihadism

• Taliban

• Daesh

References:

• Delshad Tehrani, A. (2026). Endmachtgefüge: Metaphysical fascism and the architecture of terminal power. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19326881

As the conversation develops, the focus shifts toward tribalism, ideology, and the creation of enemies inside collective systems. Rather than reducing cruelty to simple evil, both perspectives examine how violence can become normalized and even morally justified within political, cultural, and historical structures.

The discussion eventually moves toward fascism, charismatic leadership, punishment, rehabilitation, recidivism, and institutional responsibility. Through both historical and contemporary examples, the conversation reflects on why dangerous personalities continue to rise to power and why societies repeatedly follow them.

Books mentioned in this episode:

• The Wisdom of Psychopaths

• Political Ponerology

• Without Conscience‌

• Determined

Documentaries mentioned in this episode:

• Scandinavian Rehabilitation Prisons

Episodes related to the two-volume Neurophilosophy:

• Morality Ladder

• Responsibility Without Freewill

• Responsibility at the institutional level

• On Why We Fight

• Metaphysical Fascism

Figures mentioned in this episode:

• Immanuel Kant

• Martin Heidegger

• Robert Sapolsky

• Kevin Dutton

• baczewski

• Anders Breivik

Key terms in this episode:

• Trolley problem

• Dehumanization

• Authoritarianism

• Pathocracy

• 2026 Iran Massacres

• Umma

• Neurodiversity

• Critical Theory

• Frankfurt School

References:

• Prison Policy Initiative. (2022). What we can learn from Norway’s prison system: Rehabilitation and recidivism. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2022/06/08/norway/

• Delshad Tehrani, A. (2026). Morality Ladder: A graded moral regulation model of moral agency under uncertainty. Zenodo.https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19452651

• Delshad Tehrani, A. (2026). Responsibility without free will. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19480217

Clarification: In several Wisdorise episodes, I have used the term “metaphysics” not in the academic philosophical sense concerned with questions of mind, causality, time, identity, or the structure of reality, but rather in reference to transcendent and non-empirical systems of meaning and existence, including religious cosmologies, sacred narratives, divine moral authority, and models of consciousness assumed to exist beyond biological and neural processes. A more accurate description of my approach would perhaps be “post-metaphysical,” meaning that while recognizing the historical and cultural role of metaphysical systems, I suggest moving toward frameworks grounded more directly in neuroscience, cognitive science, and human experience.

From there the dialogue moves through love, empathy, childhood emotional development, trauma, healing, meditation, close relationships, and emotional regulation. Questions surrounding trust after suffering, psychological fragmentation, and inherited emotional patterns are explored through philosophical and neuroscientific perspectives.

The discussion then expands toward hatred, war, ideology, domestic violence, punishment, institutional failure, rehabilitation, dehumanization, and the construction of “the other.” Rather than reducing human behavior to rigid categories such as good and evil, both perspectives attempt to move beyond black and white thinking toward a more pluralistic understanding of human nature and contemporary life.

Books mentioned in this episode:

• Playing With Death

• The Secret Of Unity

• The Myth of Sisyphus

• Beyond Good and Evil

Episodes related to the two-volume Neurophilosophy:

• Embracing nihilism

• Earthy Provisions

• On Why We Fight

• Responsibility Without Freewill

• Responsibility at the institutional level

Figures mentioned in this episode:

• Sam Harris

• Friedrich Nietzsche

• Albert Camus

• Slavoj Žižek

• Michel Foucault

• Jeffrey Epstein

Key terms in this episode:

• Pluralism

• Absurdism

• Dichotomy

Clarification: In several Wisdorise episodes, I have used the term “metaphysics” not in the academic philosophical sense concerned with questions of mind, causality, time, identity, or the structure of reality, but rather in reference to transcendent and non-empirical systems of meaning and existence, including religious cosmologies, sacred narratives, divine moral authority, and models of consciousness assumed to exist beyond biological and neural processes. A more accurate description of my approach would perhaps be “post-metaphysical,” meaning that while recognizing the historical and cultural role of metaphysical systems, I suggest moving toward frameworks grounded more directly in neuroscience, cognitive science, and human experience.

As the dialogue unfolds, psychedelics are reframed not as solutions but as tools, raising questions about trauma, misuse, integration, and the gap between intense experiences and actual transformation. The conversation then shifts toward dreaming, lucid dreaming, meditation, and oneirogens as more sustained forms of engaging with the mind, alongside references to older traditions, including ancient Iranian practices and Haoma, and a brief turn toward nonduality as a direction that remains open for further exploration.

Related Research:

• Judith Herman – trauma and PTSD

• Gabor Maté – addiction and trauma

• Bruce Alexander – environment and addiction
  

My Related Books:

• Psychonstructor

• Nondual Wisdom

My Related Podcasts:

• Bicycle Day - Zharfa Podcast

• Nondual Meditation - Dharma Podcast

• Introspection - Dharma Podcast

People mentioned in this episode:

• Avicenna (Ibn Sina)

• Michael Pollan

• Sam Harris

• James Fadiman

• Ram Dass

• Albert Hofmann

• Timothy Leary

• Terence McKenna

• Dennis McKenna

• Maria Sabina

• Matthew Perry

• R. Gordon Wasson

• Zoroastrianism

• Sufism

• Magi

Key terms in this episode:

• Ketamine

• Psilocybin

• MDMA

• DMT

• 5-MeO-DMT

• Ayahuasca

• MAPS

• Microdosing

• Tryptophan

Those who carry nothing within
are forced
to decorate the outside.

And since no thought
drips from them,
they exhibit their skin—

for skin
is the last temple
of the empty.

Ah—
these preachers
of the ring-light and lens,

how desperate they are
to be seen—

for they do not
see themselves.

They do not live—
they lodge
inside moments,

and each of their smiles
is like a notice
of…

Read more

The dialogue then contrasts different interpretations of responsibility, from a care-based and relational view to a more secular and institutional framing grounded in social function. From here the conversation moves into conditioning, where behavior is shaped by genetics, learning, culture, and language, challenging the idea of free will as a necessary foundation.

This leads to a central tension: if human actions emerge from prior causes, what remains of responsibility. Instead of resolving this tension, the conversation reframes responsibility as something that persists without relying on metaphysical assumptions or true agency.

The discussion also extends into a critique of ideologies, including religion, nationalism, and political systems, which are described as lacking responsibility toward others, the environment, and future consequences. In contrast, responsibility is linked to the capacity to question, to remain open, and to resist fixed frameworks.

By the end the conversation converges on three layers of responsibility: responsibility toward oneself, toward others and the environment, and toward systems and future outcomes. Within this structure, responsibility is not grounded in free will but remains as a functional and unavoidable dimension of human life.

References:

• Libet (1983) – Unconscious cerebral initiative and voluntary action

• Delshad Tehrani (2026) – Responsibility Without Free Will

Episodes related to the two-volume Neurophilosophy:

• The Dance of Will on the Stage of Illusion

• Responsibility at the Institutional Level

Figures mentioned in this episode:

• Karl Popper

• Alan Watts

• Benjamin Libet

Key terms in this episode:

• Prefrontal cortex

• Bottom-Up/Top-Down mechanisms

Clarification: In several Wisdorise episodes, I have used the term “metaphysics” not in the academic philosophical sense concerned with questions of mind, causality, time, identity, or the structure of reality, but rather in reference to transcendent and non-empirical systems of meaning and existence, including religious cosmologies, sacred narratives, divine moral authority, and models of consciousness assumed to exist beyond biological and neural processes. A more accurate description of my approach would perhaps be “post-metaphysical,” meaning that while recognizing the historical and cultural role of metaphysical systems, I suggest moving toward frameworks grounded more directly in neuroscience, cognitive science, and human experience.

Here—
each one shouts
to have his existence heard,

and the more he speaks,
the less he is.

Ah—these virtual arenas
of self-display,

where silence is disgrace,
and emptiness
is posted.

Once, man worshipped gods—

now, mirrors.

And the more one manufactures
his own image,

the less of himself
remains.

Social networks—
O marketplace
of modern slavery,

where each one names
his c…

Read more

A central theme of the conversation is the gap between intention and outcome. Human beings act with purpose, yet the consequences of those actions remain fundamentally unpredictable. This tension is also approached through Stoicism, not as a fixed doctrine, but as a way of framing the boundary between what can be acted upon and what cannot be controlled. This becomes visible in personal relationships, addiction, and even large-scale historical events, where ideas shaped by good intentions can evolve into unintended consequences across time.

Within this uncertainty, Nidrana emerges as an example of acting without guarantees. The conversation frames responsibility not as control over results, but as the willingness to act despite not knowing where those actions will lead. From this perspective, even concepts like a world union1 or the prevention of future conflicts are approached not as fixed goals, but as possibilities that remain open within an unpredictable system.

Notes:
Official census data in Iran reports an overwhelming Muslim majority, yet several academic analyses have pointed out structural limitations in these data, including constraints on free self-identification and the absence of recognized categories for non-religion, which may lead to systematic distortion of reported beliefs:

• Iranians’ Attitudes Toward Religion (GAMAAN, 2020)

• World Values Survey (Wave 7, Iran)

• Iran national census data (official statistics)

Episodes related to the two-volume Neurophilosophy:

• Responsibility at the Institutional Level

• Morality Ladder

• Wisdorise

Figures mentioned in this episode:

• Friedrich Nietzsche

• Charles Darwin

• Andrew Huberman

• Robert Sapolsky

• Vasco da Gama

Key terms in this episode:

• Stoicism

• Neurophilosophy

• Social Darwinism

Prescription—
not for the cure it brings,
but for the pleasure it stirs—
that is why
it is desired.

Sermon—
not as an iron nail
driven into the stone
of frozen minds,
but from the urge
to blend,
to dissolve into the herd
of the unknowing—
that is how
it leads.

Do not think
the pulpit
belongs only
to the mourner
or the priest.

Have you not seen
the modern pulpits?

Those
who te…

Read more

When I moved to Portugal, I encountered a concept I had never truly experienced before: saudade. But before I understood the word, I heard it. In small cafés of Lisbon, in narrow cobblestone streets where yellow light slides across old walls, fado was played. A sound that was neither merely music nor merely narrative. Something in between, and beyond both.

When fado began, something inside me tightened. Not a clear emotion, not sadness, not joy. Something deeper, something that seemed to come from a place older than myself. The melodies would slowly rise, tremble, and then collapse into the singer’s voice. And in that moment, tears would flow involuntarily. Without a clear reason, without a defined story. As if my body understood something my mind had not yet reached.

At the time, I thought this experience belonged to them. To their seas, their long farewells, their history sedimented in sound. I never imagined that one day the same feeling—only harsher, more immediate—would take shape within me. Not in a café, not through music, but among sounds that tear through the body.

What is unfolding in Iran these days is often seen from the outside as contradiction. Dancing on graves, laughing in the midst of grief, celebrating in the streets while the sound of explosions still lingers in the air. But from within, these are not contradictions. They are the only way the body finds not to collapse.

With every missile, it is not only a building that falls. Something inside me collapses as well. Not as a metaphor, but physically, tangibly. As if memory fractures. As if parts of the past—sounds, laughter, moments that will never return—are torn away from within. Each explosion is not just a sound; it is a rupture in time. It splits before and after. You are no longer the same person you were minutes ago.

And when the names come, when you realize those who have died are not “others” but extensions of yourself, death is no longer a piece of news. You no longer say they died. Something inside you goes silent. As if each name creates a point of blackout within the body. A sudden cut. A drop. A void that nothing immediately fills.

At the same time, a counter-movement emerges. Something that, from the outside, may seem harsh or incomprehensible. Within this grief, within this loss, a kind of standing takes shape. Not the kind born of simple hope, nor optimism. Something harder, more severe, fed by the very presence of death. As if you are collapsing and holding yourself together at once. Mourning and moving at once. Losing something and tightening something within yourself at once.

And in the midst of this collapse, something older than all of it rises again. Nowruz. This most ancient rhythm of time in Iranian life had long been pushed to the margins of global awareness, as if buried under layers of history, overlooked by calendars that no longer noticed it. But now, not from peace but from soil and blood, it emerges again.

Amid the rubble, among homes that no longer have walls, within air still carrying the echo of explosions, there are people who pick up brooms, clear the dust, prepare for Nowruz, set the haft-seen table, visit one another. News networks speak of it with astonishment—of people who, under the weight of grief and destruction, still welcome the new year. But what remains unseen is that this is not merely tradition. It is resistance against collapse. It is an insistence on life at the very moment death is closest.

Years ago, we had read a word in literature and passed over it without understanding. We thought it was merely the name of a mourning, a story, a ritual. We had read it, but we had not understood it. Because understanding it requires an experience that cannot be reached from the outside. Now, we do not just understand it—we live it. In the streets, in the sounds, in bodies that, despite exhaustion and grief, continue to move.

This feeling is not simply sorrow. It is where sorrow does not stop, but transforms into movement. Where tears reach dance, and dance becomes standing. Where loss turns into a force that sustains continuation.

To others, these scenes may appear incomprehensible. But for us, this is not contradiction. This is the mechanism that allows us to remain standing.

We had the name for it all along. We had just never lived it: Savushun1.

A central theme of the conversation is the predictive nature of the human brain. Human beings constantly anticipate the future using past experience, which makes expectations an unavoidable part of cognition. This raises questions about popular narratives that claim people should simply eliminate expectations from their lives.

The dialogue also reflects on uncertainty as a permanent condition of human life. Decisions are always made with incomplete knowledge, and outcomes remain unpredictable. Within such a world, wisdom may lie less in controlling events and more in adapting to them.

From this perspective wisdom resembles a form of harmony with uncertainty. Instead of resisting the unpredictable nature of life, one learns to move with it, adjusting direction when necessary.

In that sense wisdom may be understood as learning how to dance with uncertainty rather than fighting it.

Episodes related to the two-volume Neurophilosophy:

• Myth of Happiness

• Shackle of Rationality

• The pole star

Related Links:

• Orange Valley

• Bla Bla Car

• Chuvash people

• Kazan, Tataristan

• Capoeira

Key terms in this episode:

• Generative Motive1

Read more

Tourist—
O creature of two lives:

one moment
on the dry land
of boredom,

the next
in the swamp
of reels.

Now on Instagram,
now beneath X.

You flee
your pitiful emptiness—

yet in your suitcase
you carry nothing
but it—piece by piece

In your selfies
the only symmetry
is

the graveyard
of history
behind you,

and the face
of an ape.

You do not taste culture—
you lick its image.

You…

Read more

From there the conversation turns to the question of suffering before death and the dilemma that often follows: whether prolonging life always serves the person who is living it. Euthanasia appears in the discussion not as a political position but as a deeply human question about pain, dignity, and the limits of what a person can endure.

Gradually the dialogue opens toward a broader reflection on freedom. When human life is bounded by illness, vulnerability, and mortality, what does it actually mean to speak of freedom? Is freedom the ability to choose, or is it something far more constrained, shaped by circumstances that no individual can fully control?

The conversation moves between personal experience and philosophical reflection, exploring how encounters with death alter the perception of time, reshape priorities, and force a reconsideration of what it means to live deliberately.

Rather than offering conclusions, the episode stays with the tension itself. Death appears not only as an ending but as a horizon that exposes the fragile space within which human freedom unfolds.

Episodes related to the two-volume Neurophilosophy:

• Narratives of control

• Geborgenheit Im Nihilismus

Figures mentioned in this episode:

• Karl Popper

• Arthur Schopenhauer

• Martin Heidegger

Key terms in this episode:

• Open Society

• Euthanasia

• Assisted Suicide

• Existentialism

• Nihilism

• Unheimlichkeit

• Geborgenheit

Clarification: In several Wisdorise episodes, I have used the term “metaphysics” not in the academic philosophical sense concerned with questions of mind, causality, time, identity, or the structure of reality, but rather in reference to transcendent and non-empirical systems of meaning and existence, including religious cosmologies, sacred narratives, divine moral authority, and models of consciousness assumed to exist beyond biological and neural processes. A more accurate description of my approach would perhaps be “post-metaphysical,” meaning that while recognizing the historical and cultural role of metaphysical systems, I suggest moving toward frameworks grounded more directly in neuroscience, cognitive science, and human experience.

At ev…

Read more

Ah, godless saviors!

They have sold the soul
and now prescribe salvation.

Whoever does not know
what he himself wants
now dares
to guide another.

They speak of suffering—
yet their suffering
is the loss
of clients.

They preach self-knowledge
without ever
having smelled
their own depths.

Ah—
what a carnival
they have built
out of human anxiety
and meaninglessness.

They manu…

Read more

Read more

You—
the last refuge of man,

you—
the final provision
for the journey
of nihilism1—

you dragged
art
into vulgarity.

O servants
of cancerous masses,

O slaves
to herds
of likes
and scrolls,

like sheep
whose heads,
instead of green pasture,
are buried
in a black mirror2,

their mouths
ruminating
the word
more3.

Art,
seen too often,
turns whorish.

And what does a whore care
for being pawe…

Read more

Read more