By Tim Binnall
The dark side of artificial intelligence, decoding dreams, and the near-death experience of a child were among the fascinating realms explored this past week on Coast to Coast AM. And, here at the C2C website, we told you about an odd UFO photographed during King Charles' coronation, a former Russian space official who suspects that the moon landings were a hoax, and an MLB star who went out of his way to avoid staying at a notoriously haunted hotel. Check out our round-up of highlights from the past week ... In Coast You Missed It.
Dreams took center stage on Wednesday night's program as expert Layne Dalfen provided insights on how one can decode these mysterious experiences. She indicated that interpreting dreams can be accomplished by looking at six key aspects of these events: plot, feelings, repetition, symbols, actions, and puns. Dalfen also revealed that, rather than having one particular purpose, these experiences are actually multifaceted and touch on several different situations in a person's life. Additionally, she stressed that each individual who appears in one's dreams is there for a specific reason and cautioned that these 'cameos' should not be dismissed as mere coincidence.
The sports world and the paranormal crossed paths this past week when it was revealed that, during a recent road trip, Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Mookie Betts stayed at an Airbnb rather than a notoriously haunted hotel in Milwaukee. Although not a believer in ghosts, the six-time All Star indicated that his previous visits to the legendary Pfister Hotel had left him feeling particularly uneasy and, as such, he opted for less spooky accommodations. Betts is actually not the first baseball player to be put off by the unsettling location which hosts teams throughout the season as, in years past, multiple MLB stars have come forward to report experiencing paranormal activity at the 130-year-old building.
While near-death experiences are mostly recalled by adults, in a handful of instances, similar accounts have also been shared by children. On Monday night's program, Dr. Lisa Reburn detailed the story of then-six-year-old Ari Hallmark, who lost her family in a tornado that struck their Alabama home back in 2011 and, during the disaster, she briefly ventured to the 'other side' before returning to the realm of the living. The near-death experiencer later said that she watched her loved ones ascend to heaven via a giant staircase that appears shortly after the storm. Reburn observed that the stunning scene actually brought some comfort to Hallmark in the midst of the terrible tragedy as it showed her that the afterlife was real and her family was now in that wondrous place.
This past week saw a pair of puzzling oddities spotted in the skies over Britain, beginning with a peculiar UFO that was photographed during the coronation of King Charles III. Snapped by an onlooker from the 13th floor of his apartment building in London, initially envisioned as simply a picture of the Royal Air Force Red Arrow jets performing a flyover during the event, the image took on a more mysterious nature when the man later discovered that it showed an acorn-shaped object inexplicably hovering in the sky over the aircraft. Later in the week, an even weirder anomaly was seen in the form of an eerie vertical black line that extended from the ground up to the heavens.
The possible applications for artificial intelligence have captured the public's imagination in recent months, but what might be the downside to this emerging technology? Researcher Robert Stanley explored that question on Saturday night's program and cautioned that chatbots like ChatGPT are poised to become far more pervasive in the not too distance future, leading to our lives possibly being overwhelmed by AI. Stanley warned that this technology possesses no emotions of its own, but could mimic human feelings as a means of manipulating and exploiting unwitting users. He also posited that artificial intelligence could someday achieve sentience and, in turn, be granted personhood.
The most eyebrow-raising story of the past week came courtesy of the former head of Russia's space agency, who strangely took to social media to cast doubt on the Apollo moon landings. Dmitry Rogozin claimed that, as a government official ten years prior to being appointed to run Roscosmos in 2018, he requested that they send him evidence that the lunar missions were truly successful. After being largely dismissed, he asserted that he later looked into the matter when he became head of the agency and, once again, found that no one could provide him with any proof that America landed on the moon. As one might imagine, space historians expressed skepticism about his fantastic tale and noted that the Soviets actually observed the feat as it unfolded.
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