Teacher, musician, and ecologist, Vir McCoy, works both as a healer and field biologist. In the first half, he talked about his lengthy battle with Lyme disease and how alternative remedies and solutions helped him recover. In 2001, when he was first bitten by a tick (a carrier of Lyme disease), he didn't discover it until a day afterward. About three weeks later, a rash appeared on his stomach, followed by arthritis and neurological symptoms several weeks later. If you take a 30-day regime of antibiotics when you first are bitten, you can wipe it out, but otherwise, if the condition remains untreated, dormant eggs can hatch and lead to new physical problems, which is what happened to McCoy.
For years, he suffered from severe brain fog, where he was unable to think clearly, as well as Bell's Palsy, a debilitating muscle paralysis. At one point, his doctor treated him with 40-days of intravenous antibiotics, which knocked out his symptoms, but then they came back, and he was hospitalized. It was there that he had a vision of the mushrooms that grow on trees, like reishi and turkey tail. After researching them, he found out that they have immune-boosting properties. He began consuming the mushrooms and credits them for his permanent recovery from Lyme. McCoy found that taking resveratrol supplements, and adding animal fat into his diet were also helpful components in his return to good health. For the last ten years, he's had no further symptoms from Lyme.
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Astronomy writer Bob Berman wrote the popular "Night Watchman" column for Discover for 17 years. In the latter half, he discussed an array of astronomical topics and cosmology theories. Regarding ET life, he suspects that it will more likely be microscopic or very simple when we finally discover it, as these forms could happen more easily in nature than complex creatures. The Big Bang is kind of a conundrum, he commented, as it can be verified that everything was indeed in one spot 13.8 billion years ago, yet it seems inconceivable that the whole universe was spawned out of nothingness.
Berman has collaborated with Robert Lanza on his books about the biocentrism theory, which posits that our awareness is the basis for the universe, and that consciousness comes before everything else. Along those lines, Berman argued that death doesn't exist, and once our bodies are gone, our consciousness continues in another form. He also described the multiverse and many worlds theories, as well as how a black hole operates. While the new James Webb Space Telescope has the promise to surpass the Hubble, Berman is concerned over its placement on the far side of the moon, where it will be difficult if not impossible to service or repair the telescope should something go wrong.
News segment guests: Sonja Grace, Jeff Nelken