New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove Jul 25, 2026 James Tunney, LLM, is an Irish barrister who has lectured on legal matters throughout the world. He is a poet, a scholar, and author of The Mystery of the Trapped Light: Mystical Thoughts in the Dark Age of Scientism plus The Mystical Accord: Sutras to Suit Our Times, Lines for Spiritual Evolution. His paintings have been shown in galleries in Scandinavia and London.His website is http://www.jamestunney.com. Here he describes the history of the transhumanist movement, with a particular focus on its development in the 1920s – and a view to understanding both proponents and critics. On the positive side, the movement seeks to enhance the human lifespan and human capacities. On the negative side it sometimes treats humans as machines, perhaps even inferior to machines, or perhaps as cogs in a greater machine – denying conscious sovereignty and spirituality. New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the Grand Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. He is Co-Director of Parapsychology Education at the California Institute for Human Science. (Recorded on January 30, 2021)