In the first half, Professor at the University of Georgia, W. Keith Campbell, discussed the epidemic of narcissism in our culture. He defined narcissism as having a grandiose or inflated sense of self-- being a "legend in your own mind," and thinking that you're better than other people or better than you really are. Narcissism is a trait that most people have some of in their life, but when it reaches a certain level, it can be diagnosed as a disorder or condition, he said. There are certain signs that become more evident over time such as people always turning the conversation back to themselves, as well as an arrogant attitude, or a brazenness about self-promotion.
The trait appears to be on the rise-- two thirds of college students in America in the 2000s had narcissism scores higher than the average student in the 1980s, he reported. Social media and "selfie" photography are newer tools that narcissists sometimes use to promote themselves or make themselves look good, he added. Narcissists sometimes make for good political leaders, and many US presidents of the last century have scored high in those traits, Campbell noted. They can also make for good partners, as long your interests and theirs align-- if they don't, that's when narcissists may exploit or hurt people, he cautioned.
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In the latter half, author and researcher Lynne McTaggart addressed the incredible evidence of how working together is fueling our evolution because we're connected on a subatomic level. She shared updates about her various intention experiments-- 23 out of 26 experiments have shown measurable positive effects-- some of them remarkable. "We've done everything from making seeds grow faster," she detailed, to purifying lake water in Japan, to making crime go down in a Washington DC neighborhood (an experiment she did on C2C in 2012). Upon George's request, she conducted a live experiment to bring 1-inch of rainfall to drought stricken Los Angeles over the next week.
In her work facilitating intention experiments with smaller groups of people, around 8-10 in number, she interestingly discovered that the connection between people can be even a more important factor than the setting of one's intention. McTaggart also discussed attempts by a group of skeptics and an organization called Sense About Science to ban her magazine What Doctors Don’t Tell You. She described the situation as a kind of "medical McCarthyism," and has taken her fight to social media, which helped to raise the number of subscriptions to the magazine, so that it was double that of the London Times, which had published some of the skeptics' pieces. More on the conflict in this video.
News segment guests: Gary Ridenour, James Sanders