
Your brain doesn’t see reality — it predicts it. In this episode, Dr. JC Doornick explores the neuroscience of belief, epigenetics, and the Biology of Belief to reveal how certainty shapes your health and identity — and how the Interface Response System (IRS) restores cognitive flexibility in a world addicted to being right.
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From a neuroscience standpoint, belief feels solid and valuable because it stabilizes perception, but it also reduces uncertainty. Have you noticed that the world that we live in has been doing most of the thinking for you that your beliefs, perceptions, reactions, fears and doubts have been shaped by unsolicited outside noise? How easy it's been for you to slip into that default sleepwalking mode and label it as life and reality? Yeah, that ends here. Welcome to the make sense with Dr. JC podcast. This is your opportunity to start thinking for yourself, reclaim control, and step back into that role as the shock caller and dominant force of your own reality. It's when you change the way that you look at things that the things that you look at begin to change. So let's wake up, let's rise up, and let's make sense of why and how shift happens. Hmm. Makes sense. Great morning Everybody. It's Monday the 9th of February 2026. It is the last February the 9th of 2026 ever in the history of 2026 and February the 9th. This is the last one. So the first thing I want to do this morning, just because I like to think that we create a space here on this show where we can run the interface response system and allow ourselves, give ourselves permission to take our opinion, our knee jerk reflex and opinion, recognize that there's a good chance that it's been conditioned and just put it aside for a little bit, pause it long enough where you allow yourself to entertain different vantage points. So last night we had a great opportunity and it's going to filter through this day to practice this stuff that I'm talking about. And that would be the Super Bowl. So I don't know if you perceived the halftime show as controversial or just awesome, but you could see that there was a very, very big divide and for the most part it's unconscious. So another thing we can do is whenever I see people behaving differently than me or adverse to me, because we're going to talk about belief today, we're going to move beyond belief today. But whenever I see humans just acting differently, I'll have my initial knee jerk reflex and my opinions and things like that, and that's fine. But I try to remove myself from participating emotionally with it. And I just like to watch and observe the behavioral component of it. I woke up this morning and I saw a lot of people from one side putting posts up that might have looked like they were actually interested in what you had to say, but it was kind of like a bullying kind of a message saying, like, you know, are you one of the crazy people that thought this? And then there were other people that were the crazy ones, the tension. I don't look at it as a negative thing. I look at it. It's an opportunistic thing. And here's another opportunity as well. So we have somebody on YouTube that is using profanity right now. So the perfect example. So my knee jerk reaction when I see that is that, you know, here's somebody that said something like totally messed up and it's inappropriate. I hope that, that it doesn't bother anybody. That's just my knee jerk reaction. But then I look and I have empathy. I hold back on what I think about it and I look at this person and say, I wonder why that person woke up and wanted to such a thing. I would assume that there's something going on in their life that maybe some sort of a feeling of weakness or self worth or something that they would want to say something provocative to stir the pot or something like that. So you can see how I'm in this space Whether it's the super bowl halftime show or watching somebody say something inappropriate, I can evaluate it on all aspects and also not play into it. Probably the way that certain people would like you to play into it. I just would love to know your thoughts. Not what your opinion is, but your thoughts on allowing yourself to sit in between the sides. The opinions of the super bowl halftime show, the controversy, the United States, the Trump, all of that stuff. Can you allow yourself to just partition that off for a second and just sit neutral without an opinion? Because we're going to talk about belief today and how powerful it is and how it can unconsciously dictate what's going on in your life. Frank says, who cares, right? I mean, I'm wearing this shirt for a reason today. It says, breaking news. I don't care. And it's just for fun. It's for fun. But that's what I hope this show gives you the ability to do, is not run from adversity or not fight it, but allow yourself to look at it opportunistically. I've been through so much in my life that was really, really tough. And at the time I wasn't excited about that stuff happening. But you know what I noticed is that it made me stronger. It was an opportunity for me to try my stuff out. I was sitting with my friend yesterday and just talking about all the crazy things that have happened and how one of the biggest reframes that I ever made, that I guess I'm passing on to you today, take it or leave it, is how they were opportunities, they were events that were taking place that gave me the ability to try my stuff. And my stuff works. So is your kung fu strong right now, or are you finding yourself feeling the knee jerk reflex of hearing somebody that's adverse or opposite and flying off the handle? Or do you have the ability to stop and say, hmm, which means you haven't made up your mind yet. And think about it a little bit. Today is called beyond belief. We're going to open up and identify powers of belief and we're going to move beyond it. That's why I opened up like this is I want to see if we can allow ourselves to move beyond belief. That's what we're going to look at today. So I call this beyond belief, the neuroscience of reality itself, perception and the biology of belief. So we're going to look at the idea of stopping our brains from lying to us from time to time. Now you're going to have to want to do that because if you don't want to move to a different place in your life, well, then you're going to have to, you're going to have to probably sign off right now, right? Because you're going to just think this is stupid, this idea of even challenging or disputing your own beliefs, right? I like to challenge everything and dispute everything. So if that's not what you're looking for, if you're just rock solid in your beliefs and you don't even want to entertain anything else, and you have your right, protect, switch on. This episode's not for you. But if you're looking at your life and you're thinking, huh, maybe there's more to this, you know, maybe I'm wrong about a couple of things. Well, you're gonna love this episode. He says, this guy isn't a doctor of anything. That's awesome. So there's the, the knee jerk reaction is like, yes, I'm a doctor. I, I went to school and I became a doctor. Right? But we pause that and then we, we say, hmm, let's pause the knee jerk reflex, which is conditioned, right? Let's just start empathetically thinking about Will and just say, I wonder why Will said that. I mean, we don't know each other, and there must be something going on in his life that would make him want to challenged whether or not I'm a doctor or something like that, right? And then I get to this place where I don't know, Will, I don't know what's going on with you, man, you know, But I do know that you felt compelled to say something like that. So I'll just sit with empathy, look at you as a fellow human being and, and appreciate you for giving me this opportunity to think about it. So big props to Will for saying that I'm not a doctor. All right, let's have some fun. So in this episode, what we're going to do is we're going to explore the neuroscience of belief and perception, revealing how what we believe in is not only shaping our reality, but our health and our behavior as well. You know, you guys understand what it means to be worried sick. If you're flying off the handle and your knee jerk reflex is running the show, that's not good for your health, right? And then you also understand that your mood will dictate how much and what you start consuming. You know what I mean? Like, if I'm fired up and read about something, my whole day is going to be strategically aligned with that rather than, like, being a good dad or, you know, eating healthy or something like that. So that's why this is so important. And we're going to draw from not just theory, we're going to draw from modern neuroscience, epigenetics, and the biology of belief. Got some great stuff for you there. So this conversation is going to unpack how the brain predicts reality and also acknowledge how that doesn't make it real, it just makes your prediction. And we're going to run this stuff. We're going to run the biology of belief and this idea of beyond belief. We're going to run belief itself through the interface response system. Let's begin with something most people never dispute in life. Belief feels like truth. It feels earned, and it feels worthy of protection. And if it's threatened, we'll protect it even more. So from a neuroscience standpoint, belief feels solid and valuable because it stabilizes perception, but it also reduces uncertainty. When we believe in something, that's the value is it's reducing our uncertainty. And another thing that it does, which is why we, we tether to it, is that it calms our nervous system down. When we believe in something, it reduces uncertainty and it calms our nervous system down. And yet, at the same time, every major breakthrough that we depend on seems to lie beyond the comfort of our beliefs. Sit with that for a second. This kind of falls into the where does growth take place outside of the comfort zone? Right. Every major breakthrough that we hope and depend on seems to lie beyond the comfort of our beliefs, and it lies in the land of what we call unthinkable. And a lot of people don't like to entertain unthinkable because they like to be right, because it gives them power. And if we feel weak, we're going to seek power. So in the land of unthinkable is things like the Internet, the smartphones, and maybe AI, which is a hot topic right now. All unbelievable and unthinkable. But here it is. Got my phone on my screen here. I've got a laptop. I've got cameras and lights and live streaming and some sort of Internet and a microphone and podcast equipment and all that stuff. All unthinkable and unbelievable until they happened. So the real question today isn't whether beliefs are powerful. That's not what we're pondering today. It's what happens when belief quietly shifts from a useful tool, which you think is useful when you're in the moment, and it shifts from a useful tool into a poison. Can you relate how your beliefs can shift from being useful and in support of what it is that you want, but into a poison that shuts you off from the rest of the world. That's what I saw on social media. I don't have a problem with alternative beliefs, but what I see is a behavior that where it's shut off to everything. And I just love living in this space where I don't shut myself. That's why I wear this hat. That's why a big part of my book is teaching that cognitive distancing of. I like to just walk through life not having made up my mind about anything. And I don't need to judge, I don't need to know anything that you don't want me to know because I haven't made up my mind about you. I don't have enough information and I'm not even sure if it's important yet. So that's what we're going to do and we're going to introduce the core signal of today. And here it is in a strong frame which is, I hope what we're creating here. Belief ends up being a shortcut that the brain uses to reduce uncertainty. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Belief is a shortcut that the brain uses to reduce uncertainty. But certainty comes at the cost of curiosity. When you are standing for your belief and you're not willing to move beyond it and you want to be right versus kind, you're removing yourself from things like potential and curiosity. You'll be very good at pretending that you don't need those in that moment. What about adaptability and long term brain health? If you look at the studies, what that's saying is, is that if you're stuck with your stuff, it's taking you out of the game of life and it's also affecting your health, how long you're gonna live. Now if that makes you angry, that's fine. You know, I would be angry too. I was very angry the day that I found out that I was always trying to be right versus kind. I was very angry about that. But it came in handy one day when I decided to get out of my way. So it's. Isn't that interesting? So let's talk about why the brain clings to belief. We gotta know the science of it. If we don't understand this, if you're not here to actually entertain disputing your belief this, you definitely have to go now because we're going to go into some of the science of how it happens, but we're going to talk about why the brain clings to belief. So beliefs don't form because humans are irrational, by the way. These are not irrational triggered things. They form because uncertainty is a metabolically expensive thing. It's exhausting being uncertain. If you're confused and you know what it's like to feel confused. It's exhausting. And we don't like to do that much work. It's frustrating. That's why a lot of people will move on to something else. But it's exhausting to be frustrated. So that's why the brain always leans towards trying to fill in the gap and make something up and create a belief system. And once we like it enough, and maybe it's conducive with our mother, father, teacher, preacher, and in our environment, we're going to stick with it and we're going to protect it because it's metabolically expensive to be confused or in disbelief. So from a neuroscience perspective, once again, the brain is a predictive machine. Everybody has this. It evolved to anticipate threats, right? We know this from, you know, great books out there, like Sapien. Great book. It evolved to anticipate threats, conserve energy and maintain stability. That's why our brains are predicting machines. Belief is one of the most efficient strategies at restoring and regulating your energy. Now, there's a very big downside to it, but that's why it's there. It reduces ambiguity. That comes in handy, right? Does anybody want to walk around ambiguously? No. It stabilizes your identity. Oh, isn't it important for our identity to have a belief system? And it also creates the illusion of control. So whenever you're in an interface or you guys got to evaluate me having one with a couple of people, but you're going to have them with people today, and you'll see them on TV and you'll see Republican, Democrat, religions, all of that stuff, you'll constantly see belief systems colliding. So just understand why they're both doing that. They're fighting for reducing ambiguity. They're fighting for their identities. They're fighting to minimize their metabolic expenditure of their brain. So when you see it, you're like, hey, I get it, I get it. So you don't have to form an opinion. This is more about you. And this is about you asking yourself, like, what role do I want to play in this? What kind of a day do I want to have? You get to ask yourself that. When somebody attacks you, unsolicitedly attacks you and says something, you're still allowed to have a good day. You're still allowed to have a Good day. So here's the reframe that matters today. We don't cling to beliefs because they're true. We cling to beliefs because they make us feel safe. I know we think they're true. We cling to them because they make us feel safe. So this is where fear enters the equation. Fear of being wrong, fear of instability, fear of losing an identity. That's why beliefs are so important. And remember, I'm not asking you to get rid of your beliefs. I have no right to. That's not what this is about. Remember, all I ever want to do is point things out. And I think some of the biggest breakthroughs that I've ever made came from me just finding out something that I didn't know because I was blocked to it. Here's a trade off to consider today. What if the goal isn't to replace your beliefs, just as I said, but to temporarily set them down or set them aside long enough to see what else exists? What if that was a goal that we set today not to get rid of our beliefs, God forbid, because we know the value, but what if our goal was to set them aside, put them down long enough, and to entertain not only what else exists, but maybe find something better or more factual or even more conducive. You don't have to change your ways, but do you know everything? One of my favorite questions to ask, and I've shared it with you many times, is what else might be true? J.C. because my knee jerk reflex when somebody says something mean to me or insults or something like that, I have to put that aside because my belief system is engineering that and say what else might be true. And when I do that, I start to think empathetically for them and it just moves it further and further away from being about me. So that's the trade off. This is the beginning of cognitive flexibility, and that's what it's called. So perception isn't reality. It's actually a best guess. Modern neuroscience radically changes this conversation. And that's what we're going to talk about. One of the YouTube channels that I like to follow is called the Big Think. It's just fun. It's great interviews. And there's a great big think on a woman named Lisa Feldman Barrett. So you can go look it up. That's where what I'm about to share comes from. So Lisa Feldman Barrett was asked because she's a genius in this area, she's got a lot of time and effort into this area. She was asked whether or not our perception of reality accurately represents reality. So she's, she was asked a question. To what degree is what I believe reality is? To what degree is it accurate, knowing how the brain works? So this is going to piss off a lot of people. So what she said is it's not very accurate. She says it's, it's a question that we need to, to deep dive in, but it's, it's not exactly the way reality works. What's was her answer. She says your brain does not experience reality directly. Now this is an important thing for us to understand because it gives us the ability to validate, putting our beliefs on hold. We have to know how we create beliefs. We know why we create beliefs, okay? But we're going to entertain the idea of maybe putting them on hold. So I'm giving you the reason why you would want to challenge or dispute your own beliefs. Because it doesn't experience reality directly. It operates inside what she describes as a dark box. So when somebody has a belief and they're not willing to change their mind, you know, when you meet somebody that wants to be right and they're driving at it and driving at it and driving at it, what she's saying is that person's brain, just like a lot of us, is in a dark box. And in that dark box is yourself receiving incomplete. That's why she calls it a box. Incomplete sensory signals and predicting the rest. That's the way the brain works is we just get little bits and pieces of information and then our conditioned mind from our mother, father, teacher, preacher, society, evolution, whatever. Some of these people that we've been interacting with or experiencing in life makes up the rest to your liking. And you know why? Safety, security, identity and all that stuff. So reality as you experience it is actually therefore a construction, not a direct feed. In other words, much of what you call reality is made up by your brain taking the limited data it actually sees and then making the rest of that shit up. We don't see things how they are. We see things how we are. Just remember that if somebody's here with us today and thinks this is all bullshit, they're just as right as you. Because we're always going to be limited by the degree to which we allow ourselves to entertain things. Even if you're on a complete other side of somebody, like let's say somebody is saying something really inappropriate and that's their belief system, that that's okay, and then on the other side, people are saying, that's really fucked up. I would never say Something like that. Neither of you is more right than the other, but you both think you are. That's belief. That's belief. So what I'm saying is, is even if I think inside that I'm 100% certain of something, I will allow myself to dispute that so that I can move into the space where I can better understand somebody else that's completely different. So here's some key implications from Barrett's brain theory. The brain never sees reality and it only sees signals and little slices of it. Meaning itself is generated, not discovered. We're meaning making machines, not meaning discovering machines. We make up most of the meaning. It's not like some sort of scroll that you find under a rock. We actually write the scroll, or most of it. We fill in the gaps. Here's another one. Perception is actually just prediction. Now remember, I'm not telling you things, I'm regurgitating what we got from Lisa Barrett. So perception is prediction? Yes. The meaning making machines in our skulls are projectors. They're projectors. It's such a nice thing to step away from a conversation and not have to participate in it emotionally and step away from it and just evaluate one's projection and say, huh, Interesting. So that's. Remember, whenever adversity strikes, if you, if you allow yourself to do this work, when you get my book and you learn about the interface response system, it's like the world becomes a game. You realize you no longer have to be a victim of anything. You're in control.
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So this leads to what neuroscience calls the reverse inference problem. And here's what it is. We assume that because something feels real, it must be real. Now, we never stop to think about that. But if something feels real, it must be real, right? I don't know about that. You might think that way, but for me, at this time, I don't know. I know, I feel it. And I know what it feels like to believe things. But what I've learned from reading a lot of books and hearing some amazing people speak is I think I might be making that up. But often beliefs are actually post hoc explanations. Prediction is mistaken as perception. So what? What that's saying is that we're predicting things, meaning we're making it up. But it's got the illusion of being an actual perception. So you guys know the whole idea of what you see is what you get. It's true what you see is what you get. But the question that we're asking right now is, does that make it what is? So let's talk about the biology of belief. And the king in that realm is just somebody that I love to devour, and that is Bruce Lipton. He's one of the three amigos. I love all three of them. So that's Bruce Lipton, Greg Braden, and Joe Dispenza. They're known as the three amigos. If you ever get an opportunity to go see one of their seminars, I highly recommend it. So we're going to move from mind into body right now. And this is Bruce Lipton's work. Bruce Lipton says that, and he demonstrates that genes are not our destiny. So he's done a lot of cool work. So he says environment. And crucially, our perception of the environment is actually what influences the expression of genes. So basically what Bruce Lipton is saying is that if he takes genes, just genes, and he puts them in a petri dish alone, they're just genes. But it's only when he exposes them to cocktails and environments that they will manifest into bone or muscle tissue or things like that. So there's a lot of genetic stuff going on. But what he's saying is it's not the gene that expresses things, it's the environment. And can you see the correlation? So the biology of our beliefs is not much different. It's not, actually. Our beliefs are not correlated so much with facts, but rather persuaded and shaped by our environment and what we think about our environment. So here's what's interesting about that. If you meet somebody that's very, very kind and very, very optimistic and, you know, just a good listener, you can kind of evaluate what kind of an environment they come from. But if you meet somebody that's combative and mean and trying to knock you down, you know, you step away from that. You don't have to participate in it. But can you see what their environment must be like? Now, if you're that person and you're recognizing right now, like, is he saying that I'm a bad person because I'm mean or something like that? Because they don't think that they're being mean. They're justified in it. But it does make you think that's why I love saying when somebody attacks me or something attacks me in life, I say, because I always like to ask myself, I wonder what's going on on the other side. Because, like, the only time that I will ever say something mean or knock any of you down is because I'm having a bad day. You know what I mean? Like right now I'm feeling great. I would never just randomly say something mean to somebody because my environment is healthy. It's healthy. So isn't that interesting? So that's how you can move into empathy as well with people. So this is where the placebo, this is Bruce Lipton's work, the placebo and the nocebo come into play. And this is important in really understanding the science. So, you know, he gives examples of how you could go see a doctor and a doctor could do a great job of explaining how the drug that he's giving you is exactly what you need. And it's going to heal you, and you heal. And you don't find out till later that it was a sugar pill. That's what a placebo is. What Lipton is showing you is that it wasn't the pill, it was the environment created around the pill and the belief in the pill. So a nocebo reminds you, and this is why you gotta watch out for Flo burglars. The nocebo means that even if somebody was gonna just like test your strength and say something mean to you, like even if you were just like in some sort of double blind test and somebody was going to be mean to you, and it worked, and you got like worried sick and, and upset, and it just created this cascade of a mood and a personality came out of it. And all that stuff you've been, you're a victim and trauma and all that stuff. And then later find out, hey, man, we didn't actually mean what we said. It was a test. So that would be a nocebo. Right? We're just seeing that it's the environment. It's the environment and the belief system around it. The. That's a very, very important study to recognize because it helps you look at your environment right now and say, what is it that I'm consuming with regularity? Whatever I consume with regularity ends up being what I assume with regularity. And how am I controlling the only thing that's in my control? And that's my response, because there's things that I can't avoid. I can't avoid flow burglars. As a matter of fact, the more people that listen to my podcast. And the more attention I get, the more Flo burglars will come, the more opportunities I'll have. Because people hate to see other people winning in life. I've been there. I used to hate when people that I knew well were doing better than me. And I never knew it, but I used to say mean things to them or say, oh, you're gonna bomb just on a quick run or something like that. Why? I understand why I used to do that because I didn't feel good about myself. But that's where all this stuff comes from. So belief is not just psychological, it's also physiological. And this is why we see the world getting worried sick right now. That's why it's important for you to be able to separate yourself. So moving beyond belief is really now about longevity and brain health. I'm going to share with you guys a study because I'm writing a whole kind of a dissertation on this. I'm going to share with you a study that is peer reviewed that shows that people that just allow themselves to be open and curious and learn new things, not just be stuck in their way, are actually maintaining cognitive capabilities longer, living longer, and having a better quality of life just by remaining open and curious. So if you're closed and you have exclamation points and you don't ever entertain question marks and you don't want to learn anything new, even about yourself, it's not a good forecast, right? So it's not just psychological, it's physical. So this is where this conversation, and we're kind of moving to the latter part of it here, but it expands to longevity and mental health. That's what we're talking about right now. People that exhibit curiosity and openness, openness to support openness to learning things. These things support cognitive resilience, slower cognitive decline. That's something that's really important to me. My biggest fear is losing my brains. Now somebody's probably in YouTube saying, he's got no brains. I love you guys. I love all of you. I love all of you. And also better adaptation with age. If you reach out to me before the piece comes out, it'll be in the podcast episode. I'll give you the link. So this is the opposite from being open and curious. Rigid belief. And we've seen some examples of this this morning. We're seeing it now with the Super Bowl. Rigid. Rigid belief, by contrast, reduces neuroplasticity. Reduces neuroplasticity. Certainty may feel strong. Okay, this doesn't say much for feelings but limits growth neurologically. My best friend for 25 years is this guy Jim Quick, who wrote a book called Limitless. And we were joking about this because we were joking about how limited we are in our five senses and abilities and our program, condition, nature. We're just recognizing we're limited. So his, his New York Times bestseller was called Limit. So we were just joking. We're going to write a book together called Limited. So here's a subtle but powerful reframe that we can use right now. Certainty feels safe, but it's curiosity that will keep you alive. And a lot of books tell you that you need certainty. Set a goal, get a goal. But it's curiosity that we're finding keeps us alive. Allow yourself to not make up your mind, or at least not so fast. So in the context of things like I'm frightened of, like Alzheimer's prevention and long term brain health, staying open and curious, it's very practical for those things. Let's just quickly run this idea through the interface response system. Remember, the interface response system is kind of my flagship program. It'll be in the book. I hope you guys will enjoy that. We're going to run belief through the four steps. And this would be giving you the ability to create that space and come up with a response rather than a reaction. What you're seeing in some of the behavior and the interactions that I was having before, those are reactions. Those are not responses. A response is one that's well thought out. It's not coming from like viscerally from your conditioned mind. So the first thing that we would do, step one would be perceive. That's the first step of the interface response system. And that's just where we notice the belief without defending it. And we also know a lot more about belief right now. So step two would be saying pause it. Put it aside long enough that you'll allow yourself to step into this space of possibilities where you could even entertain different ideas. And maybe let's move to step three, which is called process, because now we're in the space. We've put our knee jerk reflex on pause. We can go get it back anytime we want. But now we can not only dispute, but contemplate from a curious place which we now know as healthy, is start to look at alternative perspectives. What else might be true? What else might be true? What might be going on with that person right there? And then we move to step four, where we proceed, where we create a response versus a reaction. So that's the way the interface response system works with this. The interface response system is something that transforms belief from an identity into some sort of a hypothesis. It's open and it's curious. If you have an identity based on a belief, there's no openness to that. You're going to protect that. So in this framework, belief becomes optional. That's tough for people to do. It becomes temporary in some sense. And it's also updatable. I like my beliefs to always remain updatable. Are you updateable or no? So that's cognitive freedom, and that promotes longevity and quality of life. So in closing, maybe the most powerful move today isn't finding the right belief. And remember, I'm not saying your belief is wrong. You think it's right. That's all that matters. Maybe it's more about reclaiming your right to not rush into one. That's a thought. Have I been forced or rushed into this belief? Or did I really contemplate and decide that it is what is? Maybe it's more about reclaiming your right to not rush into one. So to sit with uncertainty, Kids are struggling with that right now. To sit with uncertainty, allow yourself to stay curious and let the unbelievable remain possible. Because everything meaningful that we now rely on in our lives once required someone brave enough to say, just like the phone and the Internet and all that stuff. It had to start with somebody brave enough to say, hmm, what if there's more? What if there's more? So the final question that I would ask you guys that you can contemplate, what belief are you protecting right now? Not because it's true, but because letting go of it feels unsafe. That's it for today. To support the make sense with Dr. JC podcast. Be sure to subscribe, like and share, as well as follow the Makesense substack for free daily quotes, live streams and blogs. And remember, learning without action is just another form of distraction. If something hit home and you learned something today, give it away. That's the only way it's gonna stay. See you next time. Makes sense.
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Let's talk groceries. Specifically your groceries. With Instacart, you want your groceries just the way you like them, right? Well, the Instacart app lets you do just that. They have a new preference picker that lets you pick how ripe or unripe you want your bananas. Shoppers can see your preferences up front, helping guide their choices. Instacart get groceries just how you like.
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If you like the show, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe. It really does help the show to grow. Thank you for listening.
Episode 144 — Is Your Brain Lying to You? The Neuroscience of Reality and Perception
Date: February 13, 2026
Host: Dr. JC Doornick (“The Dragon”)
This episode dives into the profound intersection of neuroscience, belief, perception, and reality. Dr. JC Doornick leads listeners through how the brain constructs a version of reality, how beliefs stabilize but also limit us, and how moving “beyond belief” is transformative for brain health, adaptability, empathy, and overall well-being. The episode features insights from neuroscience, the work of thought leaders like Lisa Feldman Barrett and Bruce Lipton, and practical reframes for daily life.
[02:00]
Dr. JC opens with a call to set aside conditioned “knee-jerk” opinions and cultivate neutrality, especially in the face of controversy (e.g., Super Bowl halftime show debates and online provocations).
[07:40]
[12:00] Drawing from Lisa Feldman Barrett’s work, Dr. JC explains:
[20:00]
[29:20]
[33:30] JC introduces a four-step tool for navigating beliefs and interactions:
[36:30]
Dr. JC challenges listeners to examine the comfort and cost of their beliefs, emphasizing the health, relationship, and cognitive benefits of curiosity and flexibility. The episode is a call to recognize how our brains construct “reality,” to pause reflexes, and to cultivate empathy and open-mindedness—even—and especially—when it feels uncomfortable.
Final Reflective Question:
“What belief are you protecting right now? Not because it’s true, but because letting go of it feels unsafe?” [37:40]
For further engagement: Follow the Makes Sense Substack for daily quotes, livestreams, and more.