In the first half, teacher and writer Benjamin Dancer, the Director of Public Relations for the Colorado EMP Task Force (Peter Pry's organization), discussed the vulnerability of the US power grid. He explores the threat in his new novel in which a villain tries to sabotage the grid with a sophisticated cyberattack. Mass casualties would likely occur if the power grid goes down for an extended period, with increased sanitation issues, he noted. Dancer also pointed out that the approximately 100 nuclear facilities in America are dependent on electricity to run safely. While they do have emergency generators that run on diesel, once that fuel is depleted, we could be looking at multiple Fukushima situations, he cautioned.
Meteorologist Sandy McDonald briefly joined the conversation to talk about his paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change. He proposes developing a widespread wind and solar program across the continental US with the energy transmitted over an underground high voltage direct current line, that would be protected from solar storm damage. His proposal brings both the right and left political spectrums together, by connecting the issue of sustainability with the existential threat posed by our power grid's vulnerability, Dancer commented. Besides hardening the grid, another option would be for the US to choose a more sustainable population size that would not be so dependent on electricity for its food sources, Dancer added.
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A pioneer in the lucid dream research at Stanford University and Montreal's Sacré-Coeur Hospital, Craig Sim Webb has 25 years of experience researching dreams and consciousness. In the latter half, he spoke about the relationship of creativity to dreams, and shared some of the fascinating dreams behind the music and lives of such artists as Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Sting, Taylor Swift, U2, Stevie Wonder, and many others. For instance, one night while on tour, Bono of U2 fell asleep listening to a song by Roy Orbison, and lyrics involving a "mystery girl" came to him in a dream. Later, after the concert, none other than Roy Orbison showed up backstage, and Bono and The Edge ended up writing the song "She's a Mystery to Me" for Orbison, using some of the "mystery girl" dream lyrics, Webb recounted.
When Stevie Wonder's beloved mother passed away in 2006, he vowed to take a yearlong break from concerts and performing, but his mother visited him in a dream and told him he should continue performing, and so he did. Webb also related some of his own dream revelations, such as seeing an intricate ribbon/petal structure that simultaneously represented a piece of music. Dreams can be a gateway for synesthesia-like experiences-- the combining and bridging of sensory faculties, he explained. For more, check out his video on Applied Dreaming.
News segment guests: Mish Shedlock, Howard Bloom
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