This week we have a very special guest.

We are honored and privileged to welcome Mike Niconchuk.

I met Mike at the Boston Trauma Conference. I was so moved by his talks there that I invited him for an interview. Mike is a researcher, activist, author, hero and all around amazing human being.

I say hero because Mike works on the front lines, where raw trauma is happening live around him. Mike is also of a different generation than I. And his story about intergenerational transmission hails back to a different part of the world than mine. But I am also interested in all our commonalities.

Mike is also a founding member of the Salama Project, for those who may be as inspired as I am by him, and would like to know more or help:

https://salamaproject.com/

Everyone is talking about it, and it seems to be everywhere. I figure it is time for me to say at least a few words about AI. I admit I feel very mixed about it, but then that is true about so many relationships, people and things in this complicated world. My giving it a chance to show its merits is admittedly quite new. And my apprehensions about mechanization and de-personalization are quite old! It does appear to be here to stay, and it certainly is proliferating where I live.

The book I mention in the podcast is: Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age (2025) by Vauhini Vara. I didn’t love the book, but it is written from a writer’s standpoint and was thought provoking.

I am madly preparing for the Transform Trauma Oxford 2025 Conference that is rapidly approaching. Hope to see you there!

I was about five when they came out with color TV’s. We did not have one, and continued to huddle around the grainy old black and white for a long time. But I remember our dentist, who was a family friend, would sometimes have us over for dinner with his family on a Sunday evening. All I remember about those visits, is gathering around their spectacular color TV to watch Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color.

I was enthralled by the intro’s. Vivid kaleidoscopic swirls of primary color, like a moving Jackson Pollack painting. I always loved color.

This week’s video explores how the neglect brain gets stuck in black and white. And what that has to do with the “three P’s”, helplessness and hopelessness. With the help of neuroscience we connect these dots.