Good Morning, Bubbies

I share a personal New Year's reflection ritual involving three key aspects: challenging the status quo, celebrating successes, and recognizing lessons learned from the past year. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bassam.substack.com

I explore the profound question of life’s meaning, discussing how my circumstances and capacity shape my potential. I reflect on the importance of growth, doing good, and making the most of my opportunity. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bassam.substack.com

The human mind, and its nervous system, are staggeringly impressive. For those of us with typical sensory access, this framework is familiar: 1. Sight 2. Smell 3. Hearing 4. Touch 5. Taste But I only recently came to appreciate that neuroscience recognizes at least five more: 1. Proprioception – the awareness of body position and movement without looking (e.g., knowing where your hand is in the dark) 2. Equilibrioception – our sense of balance and spatial orientation 3. Thermoception – sensing heat and cold 4. Nociception – perceiving pain 5. Interoception – sensing internal bodily states like hunger, thirst, heart rate, or fullness Even more fascinating: scientists are now debating four additional senses that remain controversial but compelling: 1. Chronoception – the perception of the passage of time 2. Magnetoreception – some evidence suggests humans may perceive Earth's magnetic fields 3. Chemoreception – the detection of chemical stimuli, such as CO₂ levels in the blood 4. Stretch receptors – in organs like the stomach and lungs to detect internal pressure or fullness I learned all of this while researching a curious question:Could memory be a kind of sense? After all, some memories feel so vivid I can see them, hear them, even feel them. They can bring tears, joy, even physical reactions. But scientifically-speaking, memory isn’t considered a “sense”—because senses perceive real-time stimuli, while memory is a reconstruction of past experience. And yet...Memory activates many of the same brain regions as direct perception. When we recall a moment, our minds can reimagine the light, the sound, the feeling. It’s not perception—but it’s astonishingly close. This video is from nearly 1,000 days ago, but I still feel this moment.I miss it. It was special. And I’m grateful that my memory still carries its senses. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bassam.substack.com