In the first half, financial expert Catherine Austin Fitts joined George in the studio to discuss the American economy, as well as how to manage your money and investments in order to have a healthy financial future. Rising interest rates in the US will hurt sovereign governments around the world that have borrowed tremendous amounts of money, but it will provide some relief to insurance companies and pension funds, she said. The Feds, she revealed, keep printing money, which debases the currency, and pushes up the price of assets such as property, and this ends up hurting the middle class.

Another reason she cited for the squeeze on the middle class is that government spending has a negative return on investment of tax dollars, and that trillions have been siphoned out of the back of the federal government. We are seeing a shift with the industrial economy becoming the networked economy, Fitts pointed out, with retail moving to online sales where the products are stocked and distributed from huge warehouses. She recommended that people in their 20s work on building their skills such as in the fields of engineering, space, and material sciences, while in 30s-40s range, it's an ideal time to start your own business. For those older, she emphasized the importance of getting out of debt.

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In the latter half, paranormal researcher and philosopher, Jonathan Zap, spoke about his interest and study of dreams, and ways to interpret them. He also paid tribute to his friend, the late Mayan scholar, John Major Jenkins, who passed this month at the age of 53. Unfortunately Jenkins' research was exploited and maligned due to those profiteering from 2012 hysteria, with people misinterpreting and plagiarizing his ideas, Zap lamented. Jenkins did not actually suggest that Mayan prophecy indicated the world would come to an apocalyptic end in December 2012, but rather the date signaled the end of a cycle and an opportunity for rebirth. For more on the life and work of Jenkins, check out this extensive recorded dialogue Zap held with him back in February 2017.

Discussing his approach to understanding dreams, Zap said that the meaning of people's individual dream symbols can't be generalized, as for instance, a snake could mean one thing to someone, and entirely something else for another. "The only validity," he noted, "is the inner true sense of the dreamer," and if that resonates with anything a dream interpreter might provide. Many dreams serve the purpose of compensating for a defect in the waking attitude, and the emotion the dream leaves you with can help reveal this, he stated, adding that nightmares can work paradoxically, giving the dreamer a kind of "poison" that can lead to healthful changes.

News segment guests: Howard Bloom, Steve Kates

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