I would like to welcome you to episode 30 of the Symbolic World podcast.

On this episode, I would plan for you a discussion that I had with John Verveke,

who is a professor at the University of Toronto.

I had mentioned John's work in one of the talks that I gave at Furman University.

And John is also a friend of Jordan Peterson, a collaborator of his.

And so through all those connections, he reached out to me and we set up this very interesting

discussion about consciousness, about cognitive science, and how it relates to traditions of

the sacred.

Music sacred. This is Jonathan Peugeot.

Welcome to the symbolic world.

Music symbolic world. I'm here in conversation with John Vervakey.

John Vervakey is a professor at the University of Toronto.

He teaches in the psychology department, in the cognitive science departments, and I think in other departments as well.

It's very interesting how we kind of came to this discussion.

Two years ago, as many of you know, I had a discussion with Jordan Peterson, and in the discussion I talked about monsters and zombies.

And someone in the comment said, oh oh it's funny you're talking about

that you should check out john reviki because he talks about zombies too and i found a little

video of his and i and i saw he was talking i think you were talking in front of um like you were in a

house somewhere and there's a and you're talking about zombies and i really thought wow he really

understands in a similar

manner that what I was understanding but then life goes on and I gave another talk on zombies a few

years later and someone wrote me again and said you know that John Rovaki just published a book

...