In the first half, aerospace and defense developer Sir Charles Shults shared updates on the latest in artificial intelligence, Elon Musk's Mars efforts and Neuralink chips, and Near-Earth Objects and asteroids. The Neuralink company is developing a brain-machine interface that can help people with paralysis or lost motor control, and potentially offers new ways to expand our abilities. But "a lot of people worry about the intrusive nature of a device of this sort because we're not talking about simply reading data out of the mind...but actually being able to insert data as well," he cautioned. Regarding Mars exploration, he noted that the recent find of ice water or glaciers at the bottom of the Valles Marineris canyon could provide drinking water for astronauts.
On the subject of near-Earth asteroids, he reported that the soon-to-be-launched James Webb space telescope will be useful in spotting objects that have yet to be cataloged or assessed. One development in AI that Shults is particularly excited about is that of xenobots-- living robots made from clusters of cells extracted from a frog. This new form of biological self-replication shows promise for regenerative medicine. Shults also talked about his interest in education, and his development of a complete virtual education system. Starting next week, he'll be offering a six-part online course on the Fermi Paradox.
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Plant spirit healer, geomancer, and shamanic teacher Emma Farrell is a lineage holder of the White Serpent teachings. In the latter half, she talked about plant spirit healing through meditation with plants, as well as the work of Cleve Baxter, a pioneer in plant perception. In the 1960s, Baxter's research into plant sentience involved connecting plants to a lie detector. He concluded that plants could perceive pain and that they have a kind of extrasensory perception. Newer research by Monica Gagliano has explored plant consciousness and interspecies communication, said Farrell, who noted that plants express themselves through feeling rather than language.
In the ancient healing tradition, some plants have been communicating with humans for a long time, she said, like mugwort, which has been used by people such as midwives and folk healers. Farrell first began her plant spirit communication with the hallucinogenic African plant iboga during a sacred ceremony. "I had a conversation with the spirit of it, and it completely shattered my paradigm," she detailed, adding that this direct experience of the plant spirit world shifted her perception of the world, and opened her up to new ways of thinking. Roses, she revealed, are among the highest vibrational plant and flower, and that's why they're associated with love and the goddess of the land.
During the last half-hour, George played an excerpt from his 2013 interview with the late author Anne Rice. Listen to the full hour here.
News segment guests: Christian Wilde, Kevin Randle