Since his Ph.D. in 1976, Peter Ward has published more than 140 scientific papers dealing with paleontological, zoological, and astronomical topics. In the first half, he discussed the latest news and research on the environment, climate, science, and related topics. Scientists are on the brink of engineering a living woolly mammoth, a hairy elephant-like creature that went extinct around 4,000 years ago. The company Colossal Biosciences has derived stem cells from living Asian elephants that may bring them closer to their goal of bringing back the mammoth, but Ward questioned whether such a project could genuinely replicate the original creature, and if they do, what kind of ecosystem could host the animal?
Ward also reported that an international body of geologists recently voted down the proposal for a new geological period named "the Anthropocene," referring to our current era, when human activity has been the dominant influence on climate. Asked what timeline he'd most like to visit, he specified a period 83 million years ago near the San Juan Islands, an archipelago off Washington state. It would have been an underwater paradise with creatures that are no longer around, like the beautiful shelled animals called ammonites and mosasaurs, huge aquatic reptiles, he outlined. Ward announced that he's working on a new book exploring the idea that many planets may only host life for very limited periods.
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In the latter half, journalist, broadcaster, and author Alan Pearce revealed the wide variety of conscious states that can arise during comas, both positive and negative, and how accepting the reality of these experiences is crucial to coma survivors and the field of consciousness and NDE studies. The official medical explanation is that during a coma, medically induced or otherwise, the patient will have no recollections, but as Pearce and his wife began to investigate, they found that not to be true. Often, the patients had appalling, nightmarish experiences, sometimes involving the hospital staff trying to kill or torture them (this may relate to the staff doing routine tasks like brushing their teeth or giving them a sponge bath, which is extrapolated into hellish dimensions in the coma state). He expressed concern over the use of medically induced comas, given the psychological damage people can suffer from the endless loop of nightmares they may experience. Less often, people reported beautiful experiences akin to NDEs, he said.
There were a number of fascinating cases where people lived entire lifetimes as another individual within a coma state. A man named Nick McDonald, for instance, was placed in a medically induced coma for two weeks, and during that time, he experienced around 20 years living in the Midwest during the 1970s. "He was having in every sense a normal life, holding down jobs, getting married, going on vacation, having kids," and when he came out of the coma, he thought that had been his real life, and he had now entered some kind of dream world. Similarly, there was an account of a football player who suffered a traumatic brain injury during a game and experienced a years-long alternate life, yet when he woke up, he was still on the football field and had only been out for two minutes.
News segment guests: Howard Bloom, Mish Shedlock