Re-Air: What is Energy? And Can Energy Therapy Heal?| Phenomena Podcast
Episode of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown · September 12, 2026 · 1 h 18 min
A re-aired Phenomena episode in which Ivy Ross, Martin Picard, Richard Hammerschlag, Neil Theise, Meredith Sprengel and Jonathan Cohen ask what energy is in healing.
Summary
Mayim Bialik and Jonathan Cohen introduced a re-aired episode of the Phenomena podcast, hosted by Ivy Ross, that closed out a season on energy healing by asking what "energy" actually means biologically and physically. The episode built its argument around three researchers: Martin Picard of Columbia University, Richard Hammerschlag, and Neil Theise of NYU.
Picard argued that biomedicine's assumption that humans are molecular machines is a cultural "water for fish" that scientists rarely notice, and that the Human Genome Project would have failed its primary endpoint as a clinical trial because there is no single gene for most diseases. He described mitochondria as the evolutionary basis of multicellular, social life and as a possible portal between mind and biochemistry, citing his lab's studies linking positive psychological experience to mitochondrial quantity and energy transformation, and describing the relationship as bidirectional. He defined energy simply as "the potential for change," illustrating it with a candle flame and with metal beads in oil that self-organize when electricity is infused.
Hammerschlag, a self-described "recovering biochemist" turned biofield researcher, distinguished "little b" biofields (measurable electromagnetic and biophoton phenomena) from a composite "big B" biofield that emanates beyond the skin, and from biofield therapies. He proposed that an overlooked surveillance system in the collagen-based fascia may detect subclinical imbalances, and argued Western medicine over-focuses on pathogenesis rather than salutogenesis. Theise recounted how endoscopic images shown to him at Beth Israel Medical Center led to recognition of the interstitium as a fluid-filled, body-wide network, and described a Zen-influenced epiphany resolving his "body or cells" koan; he also argued bodies are not machines because machines cannot adapt, using ant colonies and low-level randomness as an analogy.
In the closing roundtable, Ross, Meredith Sprengel and Jonathan Cohen discussed the implications of viewing health as a "symphony of influences." Sprengel emphasized therapeutic alliance, witnessing and surrender, and cited research using Chinese medicine personality typing to predict treatment response. Cohen argued that belief, intention and living in alignment with one's purpose affect physical healing, proposed medical intake forms that ask where a person is on their life journey, and, with Theise, described healer and patient as forming a single merged field rather than two separate ones.
Chapters
- 0:04
Introduction to the re-aired episode
Mayim Bialik and Jonathan Cohen introduce the Phenomena podcast episode and the three scientists featured in it.
- 1:50
The candle and the machine metaphor
Martin Picard uses a candle flame as an analogy for life and argues biomedicine has deluded itself that humans are molecular machines.
- 5:27
Picard's origins and the Human Genome Project
Picard describes accompanying his nurse mother on home visits and his disillusionment with gene-centric medicine.
- 12:02
Treating the label, not the person
Picard argues identically labeled diseases manifest differently in individuals, and medicine lacks tools to personalize treatment.
- 13:18
Richard Hammerschlag and the biofield
Hammerschlag introduces himself as a recovering biochemist and distinguishes little b biofields, the big B biofield, and biofield therapies.
- 17:53
Neil Theise, complexity theory and a Zen koan
Theise describes how stem cell research led him to complexity theory and recounts the incense epiphany that resolved his body-or-cells koan.
- 24:07
Mitochondria, evolution and the mind
Picard explains endosymbiosis, bioelectric cell communication, and his lab's research connecting mitochondrial function to human experience.
- 32:50
A surveillance system in the fascia
Hammerschlag proposes a salutogenic monitoring system operating through collagen that detects imbalances before clinical symptoms appear.
- 37:58
Discovering the interstitium
Theise recounts how endoscope images led to identifying fluid-filled interstitial spaces previously dismissed as slide artifact.
- 44:09
Energy as the potential for change
Theise rejects the machine metaphor using ant colonies, and Picard defines energy via a self-organizing bead experiment.
- 47:49
Roundtable: symphony of influences
Ross, Sprengel and Cohen discuss complexity, healing environments, belief, prognosis and personalized care.
- 1:06:21
Merged fields, purpose and what energy means
Theise describes healer and patient forming a single field, and the panel closes by defining energy as potential, connection and animating force.
Key points
What was said, by whom, with the exact words. Timestamps jump to the moment.
- Martin Picard
Picard argues that a candle flame is a fair analogy for human life because both are organic, oxygen-consuming, dynamic and finite.
“A flame consumes oxygen and releases CO2, which is exactly what you do when you breathe. You breathe in oxygen, you breathe out CO2. And that happens in your mitochondria”
- Martin Picard
Picard argues that biomedicine's materialist assumption that we are molecular machines is so pervasive that scientists are unaware of it.
“We've deluded ourselves over the last 100 years or so that we are molecular machines. And this is what biomedical science is based on. And this is so pervasive that it's like the water for fish”
- Martin Picard
Picard argues the Human Genome Project failed its central hypothesis because there are no single genes for common diseases.
“If the Human Genome Project had been a clinical trial, it would have failed its primary endpoint. There's no gene for cardiovascular disease. There's no gene for cancer”
- Martin Picard
Picard argues that medicine treats identically labeled diseases the same way despite individual variation, with no real means of personalizing treatment.
“these are three different factors disease entities and they have the same label right and therefore in medicine we treat them the same way”
- Richard Hammerschlag
Hammerschlag describes his career shift from neurobiology to acupuncture research and then to biofield research.
“First, I'm a recovering biochemist. So what that means is I had about 25 years of a career in basic research in neurobiology”
- Richard Hammerschlag
Hammerschlag distinguishes little b biofields, measurable physiological fields such as the EEG and biophotons, from a composite big B biofield that emanates from the body.
“And the second area is what we'll then call big B biofield. And that is a composite field, perhaps a composite of all of these little biofields in the body”
- Richard Hammerschlag
Hammerschlag argues the big B biofield implies that a person does not end at their skin.
“Big B biofield also asks us to consider that I don't end at my skin”
- Neil Theise
Theise describes the interstitium as a body-wide fluid network through the fascia that functions as a communication network.
“turns out to be a body-wide network through all the fascia of the body connecting everything, and it's a communication network for the entire body”
- Neil Theise
Theise recounts a meditation experience in which watching incense become smoke resolved his 'body or cells' koan into a both-and realization of Buddhist emptiness.
“I looked up and saw the stick of incense on the altar becoming smoke. And I thought, oh, stick or smoke, body or cells. It isn't one or the other. It's both and, not either or”
- Martin Picard
Picard argues that the advent of mitochondria through endosymbiosis transformed selfish bacterial behavior into social, collective cellular behavior.
“that behavior was transformed into a more social a more kind of communal collective behavior And there's very good evidence. The advent of mitochondria is what made this possible”
- Martin Picard
Picard suggests mitochondria are the portal between immaterial mind and biochemistry, dematerializing food-stored sunlight into an electrochemical gradient.
“Mitochondria, I suspect, are the portal. between the immaterial existence of the mind, right? Like your experience and the way it manifests, the way it materializes or crystallizes into biochemistry”
- Martin Picard
Picard reports that his lab's three studies found positive psychological experiences associated with more mitochondria and better energy transformation, with animal work indicating a bidirectional relationship.
“People who report more positive experiences, like feeling more optimistic, right? Feeling like your life has purpose, feeling connections to other human beings. Those things seem to be associated with more mitochondria and mitochondria that are better at transforming energy”
- Richard Hammerschlag
Hammerschlag proposes an overlooked 24-7 surveillance system in the body that detects imbalances before clinical signs appear.
“What I'm really interested in is the possibility that there's an overlooked surveillance system in the body that is engaged 24-7 in detecting where imbalances occur”
- Richard Hammerschlag
Hammerschlag suggests this monitoring system could exist within the collagen-based fascial network, which touches all cells and can carry signals about their state of health.
“My sense is that this system, if it exists, could well exist within the fascia, what exists between the tissues”
Linked moment · 40:01Skip to 40:01 using a listen link in the info box.
Neil TheiseTheise explains that the fluid-filled interstitial spaces were long dismissed as slide artifact because tissue processing drains the water out.
“And those cracks we saw, those were the remnants of the fluid-filled spaces”
- Neil Theise
Theise reports that practitioners from acupuncture, Ayurvedic and Tibetan traditions recognized the interstitial anatomy as what they had been describing poetically.
“whatever they were talking about, when I would show them the anatomy, they'd say, yes, that's what we've been talking about”
- Richard Hammerschlag
Hammerschlag argues evolution would not produce a whole-body system that was not also a means of carrying information.
“Evolution doesn't evolve a whole body system without it also being a means of carrying information. That's what I really believe”
- Neil Theise
Theise argues bodies are not machines because low-level randomness, like ants that stray from the food line, is what allows adaptation.
“But there's always 2% to 4% of the ants that aren't following the line. And it's those ants that are likely to bump into a food source somewhere else”
- Martin Picard
Picard defines energy as the potential for change at biological, psychological and societal levels.
“Energy is the potential for change. And that's true at the biological level, the psychological level, at the societal level”
- Martin Picard
Picard argues that infusing energy into even a simple system produces spontaneous self-organization, and that in a complex system this may feel like consciousness.
“You just flow a bit of energy and then it feels like something. Consciousness”
- Jonathan Cohen
Cohen argues the systems influencing us are far more complex than a machine model allows, in part because many operate beyond the five senses.
“but it is far more complex than we're able to deduce simply from our understanding of how a machine operates, right? It's not simply... command in and and result”
- Jonathan Cohen
Cohen argues that a practitioner who holds faith and intention for a patient has a physiological impact.
“I think having a practitioner, whether it be a doctor or someone in what's considered an alternative field, really hold that space and intention for us has a physiological impact”
- Jonathan Cohen
Cohen, citing Ellen Langer, argues a prognosis is a statistical average that cannot account for an individual's variables.
“a prognosis is simply a mathematical probability based on everyone else. They're not able to consider all the multiple variables of that individual”
- Neil Theise
Theise argues that a healer and patient form a single merged electromagnetic field rather than two separate fields interacting.
“And so when they come in closer and closer and closer, it's not two separate fields. It's a single merged field out of the two”
- Jonathan Cohen
Cohen argues that healing shifts begin when intention is set, well before a session takes place.
“It also makes me think of shifts start to happen as soon as you set the intention or make the commitment to do something that it's not simply in the room itself it's the process leading up”
- Jonathan Cohen
Cohen proposes a medical intake form that assesses where a person is on their life's path rather than only medical history.
“Imagine the form that helps you understand where you are in achieving your life's goals, whatever those may be”
People
In the conversation
- Mayim BialikActress, neuroscientist and host of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown
- Jonathan CohenExecutive producer and co-host of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown, writer and energy worker
- Martin PicardProfessor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University who leads the mitochondrial psychobiology lab
- Richard HammerschlagBiochemist and acupuncture researcher, co-author of a foundational paper defining the biofield
- Neil TheiseAdjunct professor of pathology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and co-discoverer of the interstitium
- Meredith SprengelResearcher and recurring expert contributor on the Phenomena podcast
Discussed
- William OslerPhysician quoted by Picard on treating the person rather than the disease
- Ellen LangerHarvard psychologist cited by Cohen on prognoses as mathematical probabilities
- Petros BeniasGastroenterology fellow who brought the endoscope images that led to identifying the interstitium
- David Carr-LockeGastroenterology division director involved in the endoscopic observations behind the interstitium discovery
- Jane ProphetArtist whose conversation introduced Theise to complexity theory
- Rizwan VirkEntrepreneur and video game designer cited by Cohen as linking health problems to straying from his life path
- Andrew AhnResearcher featured in an earlier Phenomena episode on qi and meridians
- Anna HerringPractitioner who described nested qi fields in an earlier Phenomena episode
Topics
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From the publisher
We're sharing an episode Jonathan Cohen appeared on that we think you'll love. Jonathan joined the Phenomena Podcast to help close out its season on energy healing and we wanted to bring that conversation to you! What is “energy” in energy healing? Every healer in this series uses the word. Every patient reaches for it. Ancient healing traditions built entire systems around it and modern researchers are striving to study it. But what is energy biologically, physically, measurably and how does it move through the body to influence health and healing? In this episode, three renowned scientists offer remarkable visions that, taken together, start to answer this question. Martin Picard, PhD, of Columbia University has spent his career studying mitochondria, the body's cellular power sources, and has found them far more connected to our inner experiences, our consciousness, than biomedicine ever assumed, and likely far more central to how we heal. Richard Hammerschlag, PhD, co-authored the paper that helped define the modern science of the biofield: the organizing fields of energy and information that operate within the body and extend outward from it. Like the nested Qi fields of older traditions, these are dynamic interrelating layers — energy running all the way in and likely all the way out. Neil Theise, MD, of NYU helped identify the interstitium, a remarkable recent major discovery of a fluid-filled network running throughout the body. Consistent with the intuitions of ancient healing systems, it may help explain how signals fundamental to health and healing actually travel, a new communication network in the body previously overlooked by modern medicine. Together, these three voices present a compelling, eye-opening, and deeply human vision of the body and mind not as a machine, but as a dynamic energetic ecosystem. Go to https://helixsleep.com/breakdown to receive up to 30% off your Helix mattress. Visit https://drinkag1.com/BREAKDOWN and get a FREE AG1 Flavor S…
Summary, chapters and key points were generated from the episode transcript on September 27, 2026. Quotes are checked word for word against the transcript.