Now, administering third-eyed drops.

Welcome into the Mind Meld, my fellow sentient sacks of Stardust. As you probably know,

certainty is a rare, rare feature of my personal experience. But one thing I know for certain

is that we are all intimately acquainted with that voice in our heads. Though now that I say that,

I seem to recall hearing that there is some percentage of people that don't experience a voice

in their head, these people might be NPCs or something, or maybe they're just on the complete

other end of the typological spectrum and just experience that same phenomenon in a totally

different way or something. Tangents aside, though, for myself and for pretty much everyone,

I know that I'm aware of, that voice in our head is a pretty prevalent feature of our minds,

whether that voice is critical or it's pumping up our persona, there it is doing its thing.

So in short, I think it's incredibly valuable to understand whatever that voice in our head is.

I think it's incredibly salient to learn how to interact with it more skillfully.

And if you agree, this is the Mind Meld for you, my friends, but getting a grip on that voice,

figuring out how to work with that voice skillfully has always seemed elusive to me.

It's always seemed pretty subjective, you know, like an art at best. But to my surprise,

this is actually something experimental psychology is working on scientifically objectively.

So as subjective as it may seem, it is a phenomenon that's been studied that even has evidence-based

techniques developed around it for influencing and interfacing with it. And when I heard that,

that perked up the old wonder whiskers, I needed to know more. And actually, I came across this work via

the guest in this Mind Meld, Dr. Ethan Cross, a neuroscientist and experimental psychologist who

is a professor at the University of Michigan. Actually, he directs their emotion and self-control

laboratory. He's also the author of a book on the topic of mental chatter, which fittingly is

...