44 The Future Now Show - Rings around Uranus, Dr.Nick on Abducted by Aliens, Transparent Wood, Interview - Astrological Mystic Michael Mercury on the Future Now and the Equation for Eternity it's what time is that the future is coming on is coming on is coming on is coming on is and we're coming on to you from Boulder Creek, California. Wow, you were coming on pretty strong right there, doctor future. Oh, you know, starting off with a little bit of energy here. Right. All right. Well, that's a good thing to do on a nice crispy, gray, cloudy day. Stormy. Winter is upon us. The wind got so great that they kind of destroyed our umbrella in the back. Sad to say. Yeah, should have put it down. Umbrellas do not survive well in wind. Yeah. Unless Mary Poppins uses them. Right. Then they can help you fly. Oh, well, everybody else. Well, that's an interesting idea though, flying umbrella. Huh, I wonder. I'm sure the days will not be long before we have those to play with too. Yeah. Anyway, happy holidays, everyone. Yeah. Merry Christmas, happy New Year. Yeah, happy holidays, everybody. Yeah, I hope nobody's Christmas has been canceled. Yeah. I know with all the sad tidings in the world, a lot of people are feeling pretty low-key, but it's a good time to reflect on how your own personal efforts make the world a better place because love wins. And Bethlehem was kind of shut down though. Yeah. Although that was two weeks ago. I mean, you know, they could have been shooting the Bethlehem Church on an off day. Yeah. Well, the important thing is, is that if they go down, we go up because we have to keep it balanced here, you know. So more celebration at our end of the planet. Yeah. Yeah. As much as we have compassion for what's going on there, it's important to not lose hope. Yeah. Right. What if it's really true that the world is exactly the same as it has always been the Beatles song, "Nothing's going to change my world." Yeah. And we're still living the same repeat loop in terms of self-created karma of the spirits that were embodied, say, during the time of the Bhagavad Gita or, you know, any time in our cultural history that we're aware of, that we believe in. And it's the same souls. It's the same distribution of thoughts. It's the same aggregate planetary consciousness. Well, that's a good point. And that's something that the modern storytellers should really put more clarity for all of us because if there's the same patterns, then that's a story that could be told. And we have more sensors to tell that story. We have more resolution. That's true. And more TikToks. We can be more scientific about it. Facebooks. And every single person can change their own settings on how to behave in response to what they know. So even though the world is just as sad and full of misery as it has ever been, knowing about that, you can respond in a way that lifts our spirits instead of joins the misery. Yeah, that's tradition. We've been going to open Mike Knight every third Saturday of the month in Boulder Creek here. That's true. And listening to new perspectives from different ages, people just showing up at the mic at a little art gallery in town. And it's been a lot of fun. Every so often, I think I might do an excerpt from that. Like tonight, I have queued up a little poem from Nick Herbert. Oh, yeah, that's going to be really fun. Really in contact at Christmas time here. Are you going to lead with that? No, no, I'm not going to lead that. It's a little tense to lead with. I wanted to lead with welcoming to the show, Bobby. Hi, Bobby. Hi. Yeah. Oh, it was great seeing you there in Cruz, IO. That's right. We had the Cruz IO party this week. Oh, yes. It's a Thursday night. I've been processing the video with that. That's going to be a lot of fun. That's right. A little holiday here for the people who love Santa Cruz voice and who made it over to the Cruz IO offices. Yeah. Yeah. The Cruz IO meets Santa Cruz voice folks. I thought it was a really nice combination. Mm hmm. Seemed to be very, very good. How about you, Bobby? What was your experience of the party? I finally got to meet so many faces at Michael. I hear. Yeah, Michael Ovelson, Dave Welch, and, um, oh, Billy Sunshine. Billy Sunshine, right. Right. I forget you and Billy Sunshine, just meeting for the first time. Yeah. And he's talked to each other for years now on the media. Yeah. A KCO. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. It was a great time. Yeah. Thank you for inviting me. I'm sure I'm glad you could make it. Yeah. And we saw some of our friends for the show there as well. Yeah. And I'll plan for our video show coming up next year. I really like the party. I like the people that we met there. I like the Santa Cruz voice people. I like the Cruz IO people. It was definitely a lot of people who were looking for a way to feel better about the world. And there's some nice combinations of skills and capability as well from telling the story, which is so many of our show hosts do at Santa Cruz voice, to providing the bandwidth and the capability of getting those stories out there in the world at Cruz IO where they have massive gigabyte inch of bandwidth to play with. Oh, and let's not forget about the, I think, local first auction. Yes. That was really amazing. There was an amazing amount of wonderful prizes donated by local community businesses. And the tickets were very reasonable. And for some reason, we were really lucky that night. Yes. Like being strike twice. Two of the dozen or so prizes that were donated by buying just enough raffle tickets to cover our bases. And so I think one of our prizes, we run from our very own bank. That's right. We won the Bay Federal Movie Night Christmas prize, which had popcorn and lots of Christmas movies to watch and a cute little sign that says movie night that will be integrating into our future video. We plan to have movie nights next year. So that was very serendipitous. Thank you, Bay Fad. How did you know? Yeah. And then we also really lucked out. We won a cruise for two people on the Chardonnay. The Chardonnay Sunset Cruz. Yeah. So that's going to be a lot of fun. Anyway, we were the only ones on that cruise since the maps meeting with Paul Stamets. Yeah. Right. So yeah, beautiful cruise. Beautiful way to see the sunset at night on the Bay here in Santa Cruz. Right. It's like $150 value is what it's like. Oh, for two 150 for two. Okay. Yes, with the champagne and glass of course. Right. And our friend Billy Sunshine took home a beautiful piece of art. Pelican over the pier. Yeah, the Santa Cruz pier. A beautiful painting, a photorealistic Santa Cruz classic. Yeah. Wonderful stuff. We'll go on. We'll have some videos of that coming up in our new show. Right. Meanwhile, happy birthday. Happy birthday to Brother Norman and darling sister Michael Lauren. Yeah. Actually, we call her Lady Michael. Lady Michael who had her party here in Boulder Creek on this weekend at the same place as the open mic. That's right. You too, we're so used to celebrating both of you on the same day. And here you're both far away. Lady Michael is visiting her family. Norman has moved to another state and yet we are still celebrating your birthday. Thanks to the web. We're all connected. That's right. We went to an open mic this last weekend. And the next day there was another open mic at Lady Michael's official birthday party. Yes. We did a lot of open mics this weekend. Yes. And Sunny Bunny here did both of them. That's true. I definitely felt I was in my element. You sit right at home on the stage. With my people and I felt like waxing poetic. And so I have to thank Nick Herbert for inviting us to our very first little ASCII event last month. They are going to go to the last game. Yeah. Here in Boulder Creek. Because of that, we now know that every third Saturday night, we can go to a local open mic and meet some wonderful people and enjoy the ambiance and the talent. You know what's interesting there is that the place it's been four open mic nights now. So it's relatively new phenomenon here. No, I think this was the fifth one. Maybe the fifth. We're at the fifth one of the Saturday night. And then Lady Michael had her birthday party on Sunday. So we had one engineer from the valley came into the performance. Mostly because he was looking for an open mic in Silicon Valley somewhere. And there wasn't one that Saturday night except up here, way up in the Santa Cruz mountains. High above the valley, the mountain people. So he made his way up to the mountain people. And I think he feels like he's found some new friends. He came again. He was here for the fourth one, which was also our first one. And he came again for the fifth one. And that was Aaron. Yeah. Very elfy looking fellow, I must say. Fit right in in the Christmas spirit. Yeah. So if you're interested in any of that, you can go to our links page here on drfutureshow.com/links. And I'll have a link to our videos of the ones we mentioned on the show. I'm not far off from a Santa Cruz voice party video. I've been putting that together too. Right. It's all in the editing. I know. Gotta make it watchable for this speed addicted talent. People like to watch short things. Well, yeah, I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. It's like 10 minute movies of the largest. This one is an edit to a song that was sung there. And so it's only four minutes long. Oh, great. That's gonna be fun. I'm having fun editing it. Yeah. Put everybody in it. It's amazing how a song can really bring together montages. It's really wonderful. Yeah. It's a great way to watch it. Yeah. I'll remember these go by. Let you know when with that's up, you know, you get to meet all of us in a kind of a fun way there. Mm-hmm. Well, since we're talking about all of this open mic stuff, maybe now is a good time to let Nick's poetry come through. Oh, yeah. You want me to play one of his pumps and one on the aliens? Yeah. Yeah. That's a nice launch into our space segment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Here we go. This is a Saturday Night Open mic. This is Dr. Nick Herbert, our quantum physicist who did a poem on aliens. This one I actually performed at Alsace, the guy who's with the camera here, which all kinds of dazzling rights and sparkles all over the place. I've really been here at Lily Escade. Abduction by aliens. They were the most beautiful men and women I had ever seen. They'd claim to have come overnight to early some of the Pleiades. That's impossible, I scoffed. Pleiades are 500 line years away. No energy though could bring you here. So far, so fast, I showed them the physics. They just laughed. That happened. They crowded against me laughing. They touched me all over. I was frightened and curious at the same time. They pressed their warm hands against my skull so I feel their bodies vibrated like big-pouring cats. The buzzing from their palms spread through my head, down my neck into my torso, my backbone, my toes, and down through my legs. The buzzing from their palms divided into thousands of separate vibrations, multiple rivers that burrowed into my flesh. Till it seemed I could feel every cell in my body throbbing in warm, synchronous spasms. It was utterly delicious. I loved it. I was overwhelmed, so swept away by this spaly and body music that I could barely pay attention to what they were doing with the rest of me. I wouldn't call it an animal. Except I know that I do not have that many openings. Also, they penetrated my veins with tiny needles, entering my bloodstream in dozens of places. They shoved small tubes up my nose into my ears, under my fingernails, between my toes. They reopened by cranial sutures, reattached by umbilical cord, and threw these new entrances into my body. And threw these new entrances into my body, they drained out toxins, horrible black fluids. I could feel them leaving. It popped in liquid delights, aromatic pleasure fluids, warm, sweet tasty liquids, pulsing guitar into their alpani music. It was utterly delicious, this spaly and medical science. Involveant darkness, in warm black ratigravity, I floated as beautiful luminescent men and women bent over me gazing into my eyes. Oh those deep aly eyes, I could not look away. Never how I felt such strange intelligence, such deep sorrow, such raw animal power, as flew from their wide open eyes. We shared on sales. They were experts at ITA, and they were touching me a ombre with slippery electric fingers, and using their mouths, their snout, their tendrils, and by grisses, will mine. It didn't make their bodies into mine in what is I at an average repossible. Oh why what was happening between us was terrifying, was ecopri-sable, was utterly delicious. And that did. I was overwhelmed, so swept away by tingling intimate palpitions of dozens of alien love organs, then I could barely pay attention to the bone-deep bonnie music, to the multi-orifice two-way animatists, as through the irresistible telephonic messages. Salodious chasing the stage beside my mind. A message to me in English, from my new teachers, from my gelaphtic doctors, from my cosmic six partners from the Pleiades. Hello Nick, the message began. We come from the stars. We come from the stars. We have those ships. We travel from mine to mine. As you open your heart, we enter your body. As you open your heart, we get to your imagination. As you open your heart, we enter your dreams. We seek fresh eyes and ears through which to view new beauties. We seek new climates. We seek new dance partners. We seek new companions to exclude the Milky Way. Our purpose on Earth, our purpose on Earth, is to expand your capacity for pleasure. We come from the stars. We have those ships. We travel from mine to mine. We have those ships at all. We travel from mine to mine. When your love letters outnumber your cash register receipts, when your love letters outnumber your cash register receipts, when you've reforge your guns, it's a tool of delight. When you share what you've got with each sensitive dot, then we will show you how to milk the system. When you're little, how to play, we will give you the stars. All right, Nick Herbert. There's a new Tesla robot coming out. That's messy, is it? Well, it's the early days, right? This is when they're studying to have consumer robots that actually can do something. It's something that you can help you with the dishes. I wish. It gets you a beer while you're watching your favorite show. I don't know if they've developed optimists for doing dishes. Maybe. Well, it would be nice. Yeah, I don't see why not. I thought they developed optimists for dancing. It seemed like optimists swanky as you walk through the demos. That's true. I wouldn't mind a dance with optimists, but personally, I'd rather dance with a girl. Personally, I don't know. Really? I thought you were all excited about having all these robots to play with. I thought one of the things you liked about optimists is that they put sensors on all of optimists' fingers. Well, maybe if it looked like an alluring female, maybe I might be interested. But the way it looks right now, it's very not even close to having a sex. I'm not trying to be very... It kind of looks like it from the torso up, but then it gets super skinny like a tube for where your stomach and genitals would be a tube. So it's not very realistic in that sense. That's right. It's not designed for sex. That's for sure. I think they intentionally left the lower abdomen area where you would think about sex void. Really? You don't think they left it open for strap-ons? There's a lot of room there. It could go either way. You could have a module. You have a female or a male module. I guess that would be the way to go. That and breasts are important. They need to work on that. Legs are look good. Hands look pretty good. Well, I have a feeling that this robot is for more the kinds of things that Japanese human oid robots are being developed for. I imagine some people will be putting the tools for health care. For helping people get in and out of bed or wheelchairs or things like that when they need support for their physical therapy. Of course, soldiers, the people who are just thirsty for war can't wait to have robots to send a war because that's so good at controlling people. Well, it's better than killing people, don't you think? I hope so. Better in what way? Less people die. If the robots are harmful to people, that's not better. Well, they will initially. I guess that's where the slaughters come in. But eventually, they'll just be fighting themselves. I don't think most people have a death wish. Hence, it's a good thing because biology wants to live and evolve. So chances are that the robots could do that than humans don't have to. I think so. I feel that the only benefit of the media focusing on violence as much as it has since the 1960s is that we all have a much more realistic understanding of how much violence is anti-human. I think it's when you just hear the story about it in the past, a lot of people glorified violence because they would talk about the morality behind the cause or whatever, and they would fail to have empathy for the real pain that that form of decision-making introduces. I think watching it the way we do and finding ways of experiencing it more directly leads to an empathetic response where we find more and more ways to prevent it and diminish it. Yeah, it's kind of a social disease. Yeah. If you have first responders to deal with the initial outbreaks, it would be like putting it out really fast, getting it back so that it's in a more healed condition. Yeah. Well, we have to go straight to the causes of the human suffering. I mean, most humans are not psychopaths who need to be violent. No, of course not. And so we need to just create our society in a way that rewards people for their humanity instead of some other aspect of making them perform. Yeah, but don't you think we mostly do that? I like to think so. We have for a while. How many awards do kids win these days? It seems like there's an award for just about every achievement these days. And perhaps there should be. It's a phone of positive reinforcement. Well, as the religion has diminished and influenced on our lives, psychology has increased. So I think that's good. You know, focusing on the person, focusing on individual needs, I think that that's a good way for humanity to make progress. Yeah. Yeah. So the robot, yeah. So that's how there's a nice video on that right now. It's looking pretty good. Every year we're going to see an improvement. They have a little video up where they show you the improvement from last year's robot. Ah, right. So if you go to the link on the site, that's what you can see. Yeah. You can see the proud new Optimus Gen 2. Right. And you can see a comparison with Gen 1. That's pretty amusing. All right. Well, what else you got? That's your Tesla news of the day. One of the things that caught me earlier this week. Now, this came up because we were down at the beach house and we're putting up storm windows. And our storm windows are basically plywood, but they're painted white. So they're nice plywood storm windows. Okay. Mm-hmm. But I was reading this piece on why scientists are making a new kind of wood, a transparent wood. Oh, I want to see that. Where is that? It turns out it has a history to it that it started 30 years ago, or a German botanist had a wish to see the inner workings of the woody plants without dissecting them. You want to see them how they actually exchange fluids and stuff in real time. Typically, we've studied nature by staining slides and looking at them under microscopes for close-ups. But the look at living systems is a challenge, much harder to do than staining slides. So there was a scientist named Zig Freed Fink who managed to create transparent wood back then, a transparent wood. And he published his technique in a niche wood technology journal. Okay. 1992. See through wood. That's very interesting. So I was thinking, well, does that mean we could put up storm windows and still have a view? Conceivably, sure. What qualities give the wood it's transparency? Well, that was interesting how we did that. It's a patented process. Now, years of experimenting to see if he could make this wood transparent. So it reminds me, since I'm reading the paragraph here about the wood is made up of countless little vertical channels, like a tight bundle of straws bound together. It sounds like fiber optics. It also happens to be the way that our eye cells are organized as well. They are also transparent and allowing light to pass through. So something about the... How does that work? The shape. So these tube shapes cells transport water and nutrients throughout a tree. And when the tree is harvested and the moisture evaporates, pockets of air are left behind. To create see through wood, scientists first need to modify or get rid of the glue, which is called the lignman that holds the cell bundles together and provides trunks and branches with most of their earthly brown hues. And then after bleaching the lignman's color away or otherwise removing it, a milky white skeleton of hollow cells remains. I see. So it's really about cleaning out the lignman. And not killing it. Right. I wonder if it's still strong. If you get rid of the glue, does it become brittle? Well, I'm sure there are issues like that that need to be considered. That strengthen. You could be that it becomes transparent, but it's like almost doesn't hold its form. I see. They fill the air pockets with an epoxy resin that bends light to similar degrees so that the cell walls are transparent. That's very interesting. That's where it definitely doesn't have to be alive for that. It's not alive for that part of it. But still, transparent dead wood is fine for building. Very futurish. It's really where it's where green meets technology. You can grow it and then you can make it sci-fi-futury by making it transparent. One of the scientists says that a piece of wood can be as strong as glass and that they're thinking of using it in phones instead of glass. Interesting. Yeah, because maybe it doesn't shatter. Right? Wood doesn't shatter. Yeah. I've been giving people some of my friends a little wooden massage tool for Christmas this year. And it's made of wood. And what I tell them, it's in the shape of a heart. And so when I give it to them, I say, not only is this a great massage tool to use for yourself or someone you love, it's also a heart that can't be broken. What is it like that? But is it flammable? Well, that's another good point. I suppose once it's filled with epoxy, it would depend on how flammable that is. What your epoxy is made of? Some epoxies would suffocate a fire. Transparent epoxy. Yeah, some of them would be toxic. Let's hope it doesn't catch fire. Well, as long as I can have high pixel count, I'll be happy. At least as high as what I'm used to with my glass screens. I don't want to go backward. That's cool. All right. Well, who's going to use it to make screens, they say? They're lining up. Samsung, Sony, Erickson, Apple. It says transparent wood, conducts heat at a rate five times lower than glass. Conduct heat, see? It will get as hot. It will or faster. But it will cause more heat to be reflected back on the electronics. That could be a problem, I guess. It could be. Yeah, I mean, if you're working with tight tolerances when it comes to heat dynamics. I'm sure all these companies have their experts in those arenas and are looking at it. All right. Well, a new fun toy to design with. So who knows? Maybe 24 will be the first year with transparent wood screens on your cell phones. Probably not. Probably more like 26, but very cool. Very cool. Yeah. Shen Yun, performing arts is back. This season, take an incredible journey through 5,000 years of culture with Shen Yun. Discover why people everywhere are giving Shen Yun glowing reviews. I have traveled all over the world to 50 countries now and I have never seen a production any better than this anywhere. Five star. I'm blown away. It says blown away my expectations. Shen Yun is an experience like you've never had before. Starbling and breathtaking. We haven't had quite an experience like that in all the years that I've looked at. So it's special for us. I think that I learned more in this performance than I actually do in a whole week of school. Experience the beauty and energy of classical Chinese dance with Shen Yun. Was more breathtaking, more heart-wrenching, really beautiful, more amazing than I had expected. You just had to come see it. Coming to San Francisco, San Jose and Berkeley December 29th through January 14th. Shen Yun dot com slash CA. When your business is on the move, you must find the right place for it to move. Let's ask Matt Chilton, general manager of JR Parish, the big question. What is the right place to move one's business? Location, location, location. Sometimes it's rent. Sometimes it's the fact that there aren't that many buildings available to suit you. But mostly it's location of your customers, location of the principals, location of your employees. 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Great to see you guys. Thanks for inviting me. And I love my painting and my train trip that I won." Oh, yeah. He was also very lucky. Oh, you got that one? Two prizes. Oh, man, that is so cool. The one from downtown all the way out to the Redwoods. That's right. The Christmas train. Felton. Wow. Okay. So. Who was Bobby going to take? Jordan. Well, it'd be Jordan maybe. We'll see. We'll see next week. Okay. Oh, yes. And oh, nice thanks from my brother Norm for our Christmas items to him. Yeah. Hands, one of the son's latest insights is to use a hacky sack as a hand squeezer. Did you like it? Yeah, Amy's going to use it that way. That's what I figured. Oh, yes. Norm, the infrared thermometer is not just fun. It is fun. Number one, for sure. But it's also very useful as you will find. Just think of aiming at things around the room that might leak heat especially. You get an idea of what's what, where, in your place. Yeah. Dr. Dan, Dr. Dan Beale, one of our buddies is someone who's really aware of how thermography can affect health and how it reveals information about your inner organs, for example. Yeah. Thermographic analysis of your heat distribution in your body. Infrared seems to be really up these days, doesn't it? Oh, we're in a whole new era. Yeah. Ever since we got the James Red James, James infrared, red, scope. Yeah, that's right. And did you see that? Thanks, Gabs. That was a great image of Uranus. It's going to be an amazing halo. Yeah. Yes. It's fascinating just to look at it. In case you don't know what we're talking about, the James Webb telescope created a never before seen infrared photo of Uranus, the planet. And it's a really interesting Wow. We had no idea that it had several rings and moons and storms going on and it has a polar cap that constantly is changing form. Right. It looks like a target that has a sphere in the middle that's slightly off center. It's very interesting. Thank you. That's correct. It's Uranus. Well, we all know how people usually say it when they can't control their gut or humor. I know. It happens to us all. Can I say? It's fascinating to see Uranus in these colorful infrared shock. It's more colorful than in normal light ranges where it just doesn't have this kind of fine detailed complexity. Squiz it. Beautiful. You can see dim inner rings and outer rings and something's called the zeta ring, which is a really faint diffuse ring closest to the planet. It's kind of like trying to capture that space in the sky at sunset when you're looking up and you can see the blackness above and the transition from that to the light and the sunset right in that boundary. It's an amazing photo between the light and dark. You would never even guess that it's a real photo. It looks like an illustration. It's beautiful. And what's interesting is that the planet also is on its side compared to the other planets. Yeah. It's like the poles are pointing toward us. Most of the planets, the poles are perpendicular to the plane of orbit with the sun, but in Uranus case, it's actually pointing almost the same direction as the plane of the sun, of orbit with the sun. I wonder why I chose that. What's it? Is it just random? Is it responding to some other gravitational resonance in the solar system to stay in that space? It was probably captured in our solar system and it was spinning on itself before. How do you think it was? It's from where it was. Yeah. Yeah, it's possible. I mean, maybe when it, yeah, that's probably it and probably it's like an egg. When an egg is not boiled, it wobbles as you spin it, right? But when an egg is boiled and it's solid, then it has a much more stable spin. Maybe. Yeah. Let me think about this. If it was a rogue planet and it was out there without a solar system and we came by as we spin around the galaxy, we incorporated it into our solar system. Would it behave the way it is if that was the case? Would that be a reasonable simulation to show how the capture happened? Wouldn't it also be so that Uranus would be affected by the resonances of our solar system and start to adapt and change towards something that's more harmonious with the whole solar system? We see an evidence of it moving in that direction over time. That's what I wonder. If so, I think we would and we'd be able to have some kind of pattern that could be detected as it adapts to a larger. I wonder if it's something to do with the solar winds and maybe the interior planets, we all have to orbit so that the solar winds are spinning our planets around our axis, right? But when you get further out, you know, past Jupiter, then maybe it can tolerate having its own spin inside the solar wind. Maybe it's not instantly canceled by the solar wind. Maybe not. I guess if you could check for that or hypothesize that and see if you can plot some evidence. Yeah, right. That's great. God Google. But maybe after the show. Yeah. Anyway, if you had a chance to see this image, see it. Yeah. You'll get yet another whole new view of our solar neighbors. Why it's an exoplanet in our backyard. Literally. That's funny because we are seeing some weird exoplanets out there. And Uranus is right up there with the weirdness of a, I mean, we would stand well with many of the other strange exoplanets that are happening in our galaxy. Which ones are you thinking of? Oh, ones that are the size of Saturn that are in an orbit are as close as Mercury to their... Oh, like we talked about last week on Earth. Red Giants, yeah. Right. Right. They would have very, very unique ecosystems. Every one of them. And I guess with the question we wonder as we scratch our heads, looking at all this is that how would life ever live there? How could you live just a few million miles from the sun and survive? What it's doing is expanding our understanding of what would live there. That's right. Because we see these weird situations. Now we haven't seen any evidence of life as we know it. Because I doubt if life as we know it would survive on a Jupiter-sized planet in a Mercury orbit, I don't think it would happen. Well, change anything, change everything. Yeah. Maybe more crystalline-based intelligences could survive that. But we'd have to open our minds to the possibility that such types of organisms exist. We both sleep. Yeah, go ahead, Bobby. The most interesting thing is- Yeah. At least it's a normal science. If you have a solid planet like Mercury, actually the side that's facing us or away from the sun is very, very cold. It's like the dark side of the moon. It's cold. So you could imagine, since the atmosphere has been burned off of Mercury, you could imagine there's a spot or a ring right on the edge. Just as you get to the dark side, that would have a temperature like Earth. You know, that would be livable, but no atmosphere because it would be burned off. This is the edge. Yeah, it would be on the edge. But you know, these gas giant planets, there's nothing solid to stand on. That'd be- It's a- A blue intelligence, creatures that just sort of live in the air like jellyfish. Or like Venus. Maybe they live in the clouds or something. Yeah, cloud beings, exactly. Yeah. Out of our ecosystems awareness, it's like we have to really think out of the box to even imagine what might exist. And that's good because as soon as we're able to do that well, we'll start it. I think we'll start discovering all these intelligences around us that already exist. And we're just waking up into a field of intelligences as a creature just raising its head from the birth process. Little tiny mammals opening our eyes and suddenly there's a spaceship. Yeah. And there's lots of different kinds of people on it. Work right now is being done to bring this more into the public understanding. You mean like scientists building functional computers with human brain tissues? I wasn't thinking of that. It was a future, but that is fascinating. You don't think that's something we're doing to evolve our mammal capacities so that we can see other life forms? Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't that big of a leap. I know. No, I tend to be moving at the speed of a hummingbird, but really I was going linear. No, I like it. Well, I like it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you see, I think the difference is that when we create intelligence, like our species is creating artificial intelligence, right? So I hear that's different than discovering intelligence that's out there in the universe. Or at least traditionally, it's different. Yeah. You're right. Can't argue with that. It also speculated that if the other intelligences were, say, based on silicon, for example, rather to understand human consciousness, carbon. What are you doing? You got to warn me if you're going to play something. Oh, I didn't play anything. Oh, I think that was you, Bobby. Yeah, it was me. I'm sorry. I was trying to mute it. Well, we've seen this on the science fiction. Are you multitasking? Are you hosting the show with us and playing other things in the background? Yeah. He's just queuing. Anyway, silicon intelligence would probably create some kind of ships that travel through the universe where millions of years don't matter because rocks can handle time or rock-based things like silicon crystals can handle time better than biological organisms. So it's likely that a lot of the intelligences out there are more like silicon based. Think silicon and the way rocks, for example, can survive time as compared to biology. So wouldn't a life form that embodied that form last longer and not be as limited by spacetime as biology-based creatures? Now you think in "Dr. Future"? So if they're sentient, then it seems like most of the planets aren't like us, what we've said with the exoplanets, most of them are more like gas giants and such. Therefore, the intelligences would be more from that. They'd more look like that and probably be involving more of the crystalline intelligences like rocks that can last a long time, that can create ships that travel for millions of years, and it doesn't matter because they don't get older like we do. And they have self-repairing systems that keep them healthy, young rocks. You sound a little bit like Bucky Fuller. Didn't he call us spaceship Earth? You're talking about spaceship stars. Your ecosystem determines the kind of intelligence you are, and we're biological intelligence here. But we do have to think out of that particular paradigm or that box. Right. So other intelligences could be thermal intelligences or chemistry intelligences or geometry intelligences. Geometry is based on a different combination of factors in the universe that exist where they are, rather than as where we are. I like it. I like it. You know, that it's all evolving. Sure. Yeah, I was listening to a podcast with Lex Friedman and a woman physicist, and I'm not going to remember her name right now, but they were speculating on the many possible shapes and forms that we can only imagine of dark matter in the universe. Yeah, dark matter keeps cropping up in all kinds of articles this year, especially. Yeah. Well, it sounds like the kind of thing you're imagining here is different intelligences could just be in shapes that we can't even begin to imagine because... Well, we can imagine it. We just have our same common physics. And part of our science is trying to come up with a commonality for understanding how it all works. So maybe that's a language that we part of. They'll understand. Right. Yeah. There are certain universal things that we share. Yeah, they do. Not aware. Exactly. Like the plaque that we put on the Voyager spacecraft that showed pulsars happening through our galaxy, where they were located, and where we were in relation to them, because they'd all be aware of the pulsars if they were paying attention. Right. Pulsars, the great drumbeats of the universe, huh? Right. Let's triangulate according to those pulsar beats. Yeah, that's where they are. Of course, that was considered bad news by a lot of those science fiction writers. There were nococinary tales, and that was basically a map saying, "We are here. Come get us." And so if you believe in aliens as invaders, then we're in trouble now that they find this map. It'll show where we are. Careful what you wish for. Your thoughts do create reality. But the saving grace of that is that a lot of our gurus are telling us that, "Well, the inner reflects the outer." So what actually exists inside us is what we'll find out there. So it behooves us to pay attention to our own psychology and what's happening within our world. Sure. Personally. If you want to improve reality, improve the look you see in the mirror. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So that's kind of a saving grace because we can all do that, and we don't need fancy scientific equipment to look at ourselves, and to really understand how we tick, and that our visions of the world we want to live in can become real. People do like to feel like their insights are very new. I think people like their fancy tools for looking at reality. They like having microscopes and telescopes and X-ray machines and MRIs. Oh, yeah. And yeah. It's thermal measurements and infrared and all these different kinds of technology, giving us all kinds of new ways of slicing our tomatoes. I like the toys. That's for sure. They're fun. [Music] The idea of tiny black holes. Apparently, Stephen Hawking's first had that idea back in '71. '71. In '71 he had the idea. But the mere idea of primordial black holes, it's a speculative idea. They'd be really hard to spot. The idea is that black holes aren't these massive things just in the center of the galaxy, but they can be so small, they can be the size of a hydrogen atom, but something that small would have the mass of an asteroid, the mass of an asteroid, the size of a hydrogen atom, micro black holes. And that interesting idea? Sure. It's all playing with the numbers. So the latest piece on this that got my attention was that, given what we understand of physics, it's now possible that we could have lots of micro black holes that could exist in places like inside the sun. Oh boy. Inside the sun. A new theory about what the sun is made of. Right. Right. That the sun has lots of tiny black holes inside it, which gives it some of its powers, if you will. Mm-hmm. The thing about black holes is that we don't have any way of finding out about them, because they don't interact with light. Well, they change in temperature. Astronomers have detected hundreds of low temperature red giants, for example. And they propose that they could be harboring black holes, because normally we'd expect these red giants to be scorching hot as they're doing the refusing of heavier elements. We would be able to detect that. But apparently they don't get as scorching hot as that we think they should be. And Hawking said we should look for surface vibrations, surface vibrations on the stellar surface, and that would reveal possibly the existence of micro black holes within. Mm-hmm. Right. Okay. So somehow where the sun is radiating energy, will have evidence of a black hole? Yeah, you got to look at its anatomy, and it should reveal the existence of black holes in his analysis, the way in which moves. I guess you'd really want to get into the details of that if you were a black hole scientist, and understand how black holes might perturb what's going on inside the sun, you know, especially if they're small. Oh, yeah. That's pretty spec-- I mean, I would like to see the supercomputers show that to me. That would be really interesting. The black holes inside the sun. Yeah, and how they work. Zoom around it and see what would happen if you shifted to a white dwarf instead of a red giant. How would that change the dynamics? Right. So the physicist I was listening to called all this stuff about black holes in black energy. She called it speculative physics. Yeah, very imaginative. Yeah. We have to imagine it because we don't know how to measure it. Yeah, yeah. More fun than-- but within the same ballpark is then, I guess, nuclear fusion and the fears that atomic bombs going off and wondering what happens in the reaction. It's kind of on that level of thinking. But what's actually going on inside the sun with black holes, I imagine it'd be very, very dynamic. It wouldn't be a passive process at all. Yeah, probably right about that. Probably not. The sun is pretty dynamic. Yeah, and we've seen it to be interested in these dynamic things because you know what the top of the list is for some of the big US physics projects of the near future? Do you tell? Well, the very top of the wish list for our mainstream physics people is a big bang observatory. Big bang observatory. That's what our physicists want for Christmas. That's what they want the most of anything. Oh, tell me about a big bang observatory. What does it do? It's trying to look at how the universe started. We want to know what actually happened. And there's evidence of remnants of the big bang everywhere throughout the universe. There's pieces scattered. And as a big bang scientist, you'd want to collect all the pieces and see what you got. So the observatory will help you be able to look at like redshift, for example, and how it's different in different locations. You might be able to tell by the orbits of exoplanets how the whole galaxy was affected by certain gravity waves. You'll be able to look at gravity waves. You want to see how the dynamics of all these things. So you want to look at the ecosystem of the galaxy at the very least. So a big bang observatory, we'll be able to do that. But how did we figure out it was 13.7 billion years ago? That's looking at the background radiation. So you want to look at that more and see what it reveals in the timeline. There's remnants of the entire 13.7 billion year timeline, including the arrival of biological life, as we know, just over four billion years ago. But there's a whole timeline of all kinds of interesting things that have been happening that have created us up to this moment. They're all quite fascinating. That's our love of history right there. So reality is retreating away from us as we invent more of it to explore. As long as you see time as a linear process, that's a good model. But time itself is suspect at this point. You really want to know what's going on. And the big bang gets into that too, because time was created there as well. [MUSIC] Okay, welcome back to the show. We're at the end of the year. Things are changing. Things are changing faster than ever. And as you know, we'd like to present you with different points of view, understanding what is unfolding here at this point in the timeline. And to help us with that, today we have Michael Mercury on the line. Michael Mercury has been involved with astrology for 40 years now, I think. And we'll be able to give us a few insights as to what some of the bigger meta patterns that are happening with us now. Welcome to the shell, Michael. Glad you're here. Great to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah. Now, from what I've been reading about some of your perspective, you like to look at the bigger patterns, like how societies are changing and how they're evolving. Can you give me an example of that? Well, for example, it's like 249 years when Pluto entered Aquarius. We just went through what we call the Pluto return. We've never experienced United States with our Sibley chart. This is a chart of the United States among astrologers. There's two dates that they use, but I go with the Sibley chart, which basically indicates that 248, 49 years ago, Pluto was at the exact same point when we signed the Declaration of Independence. And people forget back in those days, people either wanted to go back to the king, someone who could be a nation, someone who could be independent. The same kind of chaos back then is what we're witnessing today. So just as a person of history, you can see it's rough, of course, it's not exactly the same, but it's like what the old adage history pizza itself, it rhymes, basically. So if you're a storyteller, if you're a storyteller, it'd be the same plot line. Well, you could see the same dynamic ingredients in terms of the divergence of political will. Those who wanted to be slave, those who wanted to keep slaves, those who wanted to be with the king, those who wanted to be independent. So everybody had their own individual perception of how they wanted this new country to become. And that's what we're having right now, the debate in the nations every day. People really want to bring back some form of fascism as a remedy to our problems. That's what I'm hearing, and I find that interesting. Well, maybe it's like just humans like a strong leader. Well, I think they like entertainment. That too. Yeah, we need to read entertainment. You probably need to more so. I mean, you're right. Yeah, I think fun is probably more important. But I think the most important part of this all is that ultimately, light is where we go. We have to get dark sometimes to recognize the choices that we really have in our day-to-day life. That's you and I. You know, Alan, you have to deal with nature coming into part of your life and destroying part of your life. We're going to find as we go future into the future, that we're going to have more chaotic weather, which is going to finally take our attention away from killing each other and try to defend ourselves from nature itself. There's a lot of controversy over the whole idea of climate change. But what do you see happening yourself? First of all, it sounds like you definitely think it's real. We should pay attention to it. But how? How should we pay attention to it? What can we do? Well, it's too late. It's too late, quite honestly. The dye is cast. And so at this point, what we're going to be doing is reacting to what has already been put into play. We're not going to change anything. I find it ridiculous to spend any dollar on try to change the climate. That's like, why don't you spit in the ocean and add to the volume? Sorry. So geoengineering just doesn't write with you. Yeah, not even close. It's like a joke. It's a way of giving some guys a high-paid job for doing nothing. Okay, which is okay. That happens a lot nowadays, definitely. So what should we do? If we were to live by the coach, should we run for the hills? No, no. I would say like all things in life, look at the history of mankind. Listen, this is my new jam. I know that we have DNA. In our DNA, we have stardust. It's not a joke. It's a fact. So I see us as almost like mini little stars of light, like sub-atomic particles within elaborate lifestyle. That's how I starting to see us that we are such an insignificant but most peculiarly wondrous form of life source that is just a strange thing to be alive. Just appreciating that and seeing them becoming aware of that is good for a step, I would agree. But not only witnessing that but experiencing that but recognizing any time you complain, it's like complaining against being a miracle. Oh yes, okay. Well, there's another thing that seems to be coming up is that microcosm reflects the macrocosm of the inner reflection. Absolutely. Permistrismagistus, right? Permistrismagist. As above so below, as within so without, you are the equation of eternity. Yes. And Bucky Fuller talked about inside outness. Absolutely. This external, and by the way, if I may, what I love so much about Buddha, the best thing that I ever learned from Buddha was this, what you are is what you have done and what you will be is what you do now because now is all there is. And if you really take that a step further, you recognize each moment is the only moment that can exist is what's happening right now, which is eternal, which means that in the aborigines sense, eternity is circular, meaning there is no beginning, there is no end, it always has been, always will be, get over it. Yeah. Basically. Just stay in the now. And that's, well, there is nowhere else until something else shows up. Where is your proof? Well, in one sense, you could say that I suddenly left this conversation, went to watch a movie, I went somewhere else. I wasn't in the now anymore. I took off into some media, which takes you out of the present. You're in the now. Either you're in the now or you're not in the now. And if you're not here, you're not in the now because you're here. Therefore, you're in the now. It's kind of as a catch-22. Yes. So you can't even if you're not conscious of it, you're there anyway, right? True. And the pure scientific level, you're absolutely right. So if you don't know, then you say, "Hey, I don't know." Yeah. So how would you teach us to kids? And one of the big problems that seems school teachers have is getting all the kids to pay attention to the teacher. If we're all in the now. I'll tell you, Alan, you couldn't have asked a more beautiful question to me. Yeah. I was in 11 schools by the time I got out of high school. I saw literally 11 different styles of teaching and dealing with students and me relating to teachers. I went to a military academy for the years. I went to Catholic school for two years. I went to public school. I went to private schools. I went into international schools. Summer, I was in school somewhere because we traveled so much. I lost so much school time that they had to always put me in summer school, no matter where we were because my father was in the military. So I literally was in 11 school by the time I got out of high school. And I learned so many different things from those different schools that I got a rare education. I got more of a cultural education than an academic education. And now as I know, they're now I learn about the academics. Well, I would imagine you also learn a lot about social connections too. It seems like you'd have to get along with kids a lot really fast in all these different environments you found yourself in. I've ever had such a few short formative years of your life. So is that true? Were you good at meeting people? Children are our future. They are our future. And if there is a missed, if they're children future, they're right before us. And these are the most precious things that will save us. Or how we treat our children is the future that we will experience. Is that simple? Yeah. And you have to respect their children or loss. If you think you're lost, imagine that they're relying on you. And we're lost. And when they're relying on people that are lost, it doesn't give them much place to go find a solace. That's true. That's true. Though I do think the future is bright there with the kids. What we're evolving. Absolutely. You know, we're evolving a personalized education system. Where we tune into how they learn their patterns of behavior and create the programs specifically for that person. It's like personalized medicine is the same way. Looking at your own microbiome and adapting to what you're based on what you're actually doing. So you're right. It all does come back to the moment. But the moment of now, it's very personal. And each of us have our own unique little fractal in this infinite universe. But I want to ask you philosophically, do you feel like as infinite as the universe is that there's a layer to it where it is all one? It really is one thing. Well, it gets back to Hermes' Tristemegistus. And that's the key is again, that in his Hermetic teachings. And when I started writing my first book, that's the first place I went to, by the way, to do my research. I started there. And that started opening up so many other pages for the Upa Shods and so on and so forth. I really delved into the ancient texts eventually. And what I realized that everything's saying the same thing. There's only one universal truth. And number one is the acceptance. I love what Joseph Campbell used to say. He was saying, just surrender. And he says, that doesn't mean you give up. That means you recognize where you are and be where you are because there's nowhere else to be. And so take note of that and act accordingly. Knowing when to surrender, knowing the whole, knowing the fold. That's liberation. That's moksha. That's nirvana. And that's really what all these I've been teaching over 22 years now. And one of the things that's taught me is letting go of attachments. It's the attachments that bring us the suffering. Yeah, I think. And once you live in the present, then you're not suffering. Suffering doesn't exist in the present. Unless you create it. Or turn it off maybe. It's a conscious mental choice, is it not? Based on your heart, ideally. Yeah. I guess the illusion is that the outside world is more real. But it's a measure. It does measure for us like dreams. When you look at a dream, you go into your dream, they can be very nebulous. But at the time it seemed very profound. But then when you're losing, it's so faint. I lose touch with it. But this is right in your face. Right now it's right in your face. There's nowhere else to be. Yeah, that's true. Constantly here. Constantly something you can check on to reflect on. And by the way, look at yourself and your beautiful wife. You guys do exactly what you love to do. That is the key to happiness. That is the key, I think, to a purpose in life. Is when you can serve other people that helps them. And you can do it. And you love doing it. There's no better way to live, I think. That's what I've discovered. And I think you've discovered that as well. Yeah, I guess the key is we live a lifestyle that we love and set it as an example. And hopefully a few others will start to share that and we'll have more fun people to play with as we play in the moment. I do agree with this. But one of the things that's been promised that perhaps is forecasted further near future is that there'll be a critical mass where enough people who feel and live the way we do connect to create a bigger reality for us all. And the tide rises for us all. Well, I wrote that in my book, yeah, that as you know, I wrote that in 2026, 2028, I think China's going to have a violent revolution. I think there's going to be an ongoing problem there. A civil war, basically, is going to happen and erupt based on their astrology chart. And I really saw that years ago and I'm going to stick to it. I could be wrong, but we'll find out. I certainly am not 100%. My book is full of a lot of predictions that did not happen and some of it have. So like anything in life, you do what you can and the present moment is so nebulous. And you hit on something I think is really important is that if you really pay attention to the children and that's what I'm doing more and more work with. I do a Patreon page where I follow the moon every day. The moon is in a certain sign and I found that every two and a half days it moves from an astrological sign. And every month it goes through all the 12 signs of the zodiac. I've now, because I've done this over a year now, I write every day and I've learned so much by recognizing how the moon truly affects our emotions with sunflares. And by the way, sunflares are another cosmic weather that really affects the way we feel, whether it's anger, frustration, people rioting. They're also tied to the some blasts that we're getting from the sun spots as well. That's very real. That's also in my book. I write a section about that in the book as well. Yeah, I want to ask you because you seem to bridge the gap between astrology and science. All scientists wear strologers. Is that it? Is that why? I didn't realize it. I said, man. Well, I hope I saw it. Look at the pedigree. Look at the pedigree. They like to divorce themselves, you know, digress Tyson. I love that guy so much. And after years of listening to him and he tests poo poo astrology all the time. And I just have to laugh and fun with him. And I would love to talk with him and then lo and behold, I can't even make this up. I found out he's half Puerto Rican. And I didn't know that. And I'm half Puerto Rican. Oh, okay. Wow. And so the fact that I've always had this thing about him, not knowing he was half Puerto Rican, his mother was Puerto Rican, my mother's Puerto Rican. And so I just found that that kinship with him. And I hope someday to talk to him and have him on my show and let's have it out. You know, like the astrology and the mill and the vanilla or something. Now we're going to talk about astrology and science. Let's do the boxing out. Those just tuning in. Which scientist are we talking about here? Neil, digress Tyson. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Half Puerto Rican. What a schmoe. I love me. I love me. He's great. Well, he's also a New Yorker too. Absolutely. Last time I was in New York, I met Mohammed Ali and Joan Rivers. I met them within an hour of each other. Those two people and within an hour. Yeah. You can't make it was the most amazing. It was amazing. And even Joan Rivers gave me a phone number to call a friend of hers. I was trying to get into theater school in Canada. And after the show, a long story short, I was talking to her and having coffee. And she gave me a phone number of the professor that she knew that was a girlfriend's wife or whatever, something like that. Anyway, she gave me the phone number. I called this person. I got into national theater school. So Joan Rivers gave me a phone number that got me into the school I wanted to get into. And I only met her that one time. Wow. That's beautiful. Now, was that a particularly synchronic day astrologically for you? Can you see that in the right way? In those days, I had no clue of astrology. Oh, I was just an actor. I was a theater major. I was a I was getting to be I was a stage actor for 15 years. I've been 39 plays. I worked at Ashland Shakespeare Festival, Colorado Shakespeare Festival. I worked in Wunuski, Vermont, and went to National Theater School in Canada and Montreal. My theater was that's what I did for the first 12, 15 years of my life. Oh my God. So you came in here? And that was all yoga based on my the training. I was all yoga based before I became an actor. Oh, yeah. What kind of a yoga? All kind. You name it. Hatha Yoga Breeding especially breeding. I developed my voice. I had to speak. I mean, Ashland Shakespeare Festival. You got a 3500 seat theater outdoors and you have to have a voice that can reach the person in the back row. So you learn how to use your voice to communicate. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And you also learn that whispering is the best way to draw people in. It is not to be allowed but to talk. So they had to lean in. So astrology got you to leave acting acting seems like such a big life's choice to suddenly leave it for something as I found a finishing school to become a human being. Finishing school. Yeah. A way to become a human being. What it's like to be human. To be a good actor, you have to first of all know who you are before you can pretend to be somebody else. Oh, okay. I thought a lot of people become actors because they need to discover who they are. It's quite the opposite. You realize if you talk to real actors the way I grew up, what I call the pedigree of what theater is about. Yeah. This is almost like a religion in this sense. It's like it's a calling. The sacrifices. I can't tell you how many hours of free work I've done in my life because you loved what you did. And that's what life's about. You have to love what you do or it's not worth doing. And that's what it taught me. That taught me. And that to me is Zen and yoga as you can get is to do something that's very difficult and do it well. Yeah. That's great. So you pretty much are there 100% now doing what you love to do all the time? Absolutely. I've never been more bliss. You know, Christian Merti also really helped me. I met him briefly. He used to go as well. And he made a difference in my life. And I have followed my bliss. You have to find out what that means to begin with before you can follow it. You got to find out what it means. And then you follow that. Yeah, I just ran it up for Joseph Campbell. Bill Moyers Joseph Campbell as I first heard that term. Follow your bliss. But he got it from Christian Merti. Oh, he did. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. The story goes real quick. The story was that Christian Merti was on a boat going back to United States from England. And Joseph Campbell was on that same ship. And he had just finished reading five years of all the great books in the world. It was just something he always wanted to do during the Depression. Because he had money from playing a band in college. On that boat over, he met Christian Merti that had dinner together every night on this ship for two weeks. And Christian Merti would tell him because he said, I was lost at the time. I was a young college budding professor. And I asked Christian Merti, what should I do? He said, follow your bliss. And he says, I never forgot that. And that's what I tell my students now to this day. And it's been handed down to me. I think it really worked for me. And it works to this day. I mean, I'm talking to you. It doesn't get more future than that. [LAUGHTER] Yeah. That's true. You're talking to us, all right. We do. Thank you. You're welcome. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, you appreciate it. And we've got a question. Without you, there's no us, right? Without you, there's no us. Well, yeah, I guess-- yeah, there's us. It's only us with us. [LAUGHTER] United States of America, I hope we get our act together because we have a beautiful had way of people. It's like we're a circus out of control. And we need to get back into the tent. [LAUGHTER] Well-- Some refer to the US as like a wild party. And Canada, for example, is a apartment above the patio overlooking this wild party. Yelling out to the Americans. Calm down a little bit, will you? And we're trying to sleep up here. Yeah. And by the way, Trump went to military academy in high school. So did I. Oh. And mine was in Georgia. His was up in New York. There were only about four or five major academies in those days. Were you-- And you were pretty much everybody. Let me ask you this then. Did you go there voluntarily? Or was you being punished for something? Yes. No, no, no. I went there. Wait. I just moved from Germany. I'd lived in Germany for four years and went to Amarillo, Texas. Are you kidding me? There was like going from paradise to hell, OK? And one trip. And when I got to Amarillo, after four months there in Amarillo, I said to my parents, I said, I don't want to go to school here anymore. I want to go somewhere else. They said, where do you want to go? I said, well, not here. So they put out a McCauley's magazine. I looked there and I saw military academy. In the winter, they were in Florida. In the fall, in the spring, they were in Georgia. That means I could play baseball here. Around. Oh, yes. And so that's why I chose. I didn't choose it for the military. I chose it because they had two campuses. And in the winter, I was in Florida and I could play baseball in the winter. That's why I chose it. That's all it makes sense. Beautiful weather. So was it? Absolutely. Did you live up to your expectations? I loved it. It was one of the best things that I did for my life, because it taught me about teamwork, working with other people. I was in school of 600. We taught you discipline. We marched. We had a parade. We had a schedule. I had all my solid courses for the first 10 years of-- the first three years in high school. I went to a public school for my junior senior year. I had no-- all I had were electives because I'd taken all the solid classes in military academy. All I had to do was pick the classes I wanted to do. So I took home ec. I took all the classes where I thought the girls would be. Theater. All the typing German, for some reason, a lot of girls like German in those days. And so I signed up for all these classes. And sure enough, two guys and 30 girls. It worked. From military academy, that's the other direction you go. [LAUGHTER] You said, yeah, the military. But you also discovered America's counterculture at some point, didn't you? Counterculture. Oh, yeah, of course, in college. We shut down the streets of Sacramento during the war. People forget, during the '60s, we had 5,000 students marching down J Street towards the capital against the war. And we shut down the city. And in those days, that was not uncommon for students to get really ticked off and do something about it. And so to me, I'm a little disappointed in the young college kids, but they're all looking at their phone instead of looking at what's going on in this country. I'm hopeful I think it's going to all work out. But we're in kind of perilous times. And getting back to astrology with Pluto goes into Aquarius in January. And it's going to be there. And then it goes out just briefly at the end of 2024. But then it's in Aquarius for good in 2025. And for the next 18 years, the world will change like we haven't seen. It's going to be a major renaissance, partly fueled by AI and technology, but also the retribution of the inequality of labor and resources. And when you put it on that level, when you have this many people, there's not enough resources to at least bring crime to a minimum by providing the basics for everybody to have. Oh, yeah. OK, so really it kind of follows the idea that we're moving towards a world of abundance. Perhaps-- Or it's going to be a world of nonabundance, where there'll be nothing left. All or nothing. Those are the choices. Well, the Hopi Indians-- I might add this in my book-- they found this drawing, the Hopi Indians, a part of the Mayan prediction about the future. And at this time, in the future, they said, we have a choice. And they had a picture of a Native American walking up the ladder and another one walking down. And it basically said the choice is ours to make-- Yeah, right in this moment, right? So choosing-- Right now. Happening to speak. The Mayans talked about it. Choose your place. All of those Native Americans were talking about this particular time right now. So choose your place. Right now, right? What am I doing choosing my place now, now, now, now? If you just pay attention to the immediacy of your six feet around yourself and just have peace there, then you bring peace to the world. Let me say this is so important. Epitetus, he said, men are disturbed not by the things that happened, but by their opinion about the things that happened. All these people pissed off in America or pissed off at their opinion about what they don't even understand. Yeah, they think they do. That's my point. But again, it's like belief system. You can believe whatever you want. It means it might be true, but more likely it's not. You can believe it into manifestation. I accept that. But that doesn't mean it's necessarily a good thing for you to have what you want to manifest. You got to choose wisely, whatever you do, right? Life. That's the nature of being a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, you got a question from Dr. Dan. Yes. It says hi. And he wants to know-- Hi. He wants to know about how the importance of exercise in your life. And he wants to know more about Berkeley psychic institute with Lou Bostwick a little bit about that. Yeah, a couple of things. One, yeah, I was a runner for 30 years. I used to run anywhere from three to five miles a day. Sometimes every other day, I'd take a week off. But I'd always basically go back to it. Did that for 30 years. And then I finally started doing yoga. So I've always been active. I've always been an athlete. It's been part of my theater training. I was an athlete to begin with. And then that morphed into dancing, and that morphed into theater. And then eventually I lost probably $2 million with a property. And my car was re-built. I was wiped out in my life. And it was the best thing that happened to me, because it, like in the history-- I mean, look, the stories are plentiful about how you become to into your lifestyle. Because once you receive a beautiful life, you have to ask the question, is this the life that really belongs to me? And what I learned, that the life I had was beautiful, but it didn't belong to me. It was the dream my parents gave me. I'm grateful. But then I had to figure out what am I about. And that's astrology, yoga, and writing, and doing radio. It's all come to this. This is my mocha. This is my joy. I love sharing the little things I don't know, and the few things I think I might know. I just love being involved with people's ideas. They're important. Gotcha, yeah. Yeah, exciting times. Tell me a little bit about your radio show. Have you been doing this for a while? 13 years, 13 years. And has it been focused on metaphysics and astrology all that time? Basically, I would say I'm a mystic. It uses astrology to help clarify people's position in life. So I basically read charts on it. I've done over at least a thousand minimum charts live on the radio. I recorded all of them. I have like several thousands of hours of recorded shows I've done. Well, that's cool. And I'm going through them now. And I'm going through them now. Really? So you actually will somewhat come on and you'll just do a quick chart reading for them on the air? No, people would call my show live. And I would have an assistant. The phones would stop ringing. I worked at KLK. I used to follow Howard Stern on Sunday nights. And after Howard Stern, I was on from midnight to three in the morning. On every week, I would get up to 25 phone calls between midnight and three in the morning. Every weekend. Wow. That's many calls because people were getting off work. There was police officers. There was medical people. There were truck drivers driving through. That show was so popular. And the only reason I'm not in commercial radios that what happened was our turn had a contest. And unfortunately, it said, we tried to show us where you can have sex in the most bizarre places. And somebody had sex in the St. Patrick's Cathedral. And that's what got that whole system kicked off the air. And then my career went with it. Oh, man. Well, yeah, stay in love here. But you know, I wasn't ready. When I look back at those tapes, I listened to what I did. I was still a little green. Now, what I love about getting older is that you earn the years that you end up living. And there's such a glorious thing. If you can hold on, stay healthy, stay present. Life is an incredible experience. Stay healthy, stay present. Yeah, so that's the-- Absolutely. Yeah, and keeping yourself in good shape physically, as well as mentally. I talked to my doctor just recently. And he says, the main thing is keep active. Everybody, as long as you keep active, that's probably 80% of it. And people, they take that for granted, but they don't realize how important it is. Yeah. Now, may I ask how old you are in physical age? I'm 75. I'm 75. OK, so yeah. And you're still very active. You're out there. I ride my bike as much as I can. I mean, I really prefer the bike, because number one is cheaper. I'm happy with the price of gas. Are you kidding me? Forget about it. Like God, it's crazy. You know, I'm talking to that teller. You know, when I was in college, 10 cents, you got to bottomless cup of coffee. 10 cents. [LAUGHTER] And they're looking at my like, God, are you crazy? [LAUGHTER] That's great. So it seems a bit. So late night, do you ever consider you like giving George Noe a run for his money? Well, I-- a lot of the people that are on his show come on my show. Mitch Lewis, one of them is a world-class financial astrologer. I discovered him in 2001, 10 years before you ever got on George Noe. So I've been a part of that. And I thought about getting on. I had the opportunity. But you know, it's not necessary for me anymore. I don't feel-- I need to be validated anymore. I love what I do. Yeah, you just do what you love to do. Me, great. Yeah. Yeah, if they want to hear me, great. If they don't, it doesn't bother me. It's OK. Yeah, you know. We all have choices. No, no. I'm not getting a drum saying, hey, listen to me. No, I'm not there. I don't like to be there. That's not my style. It's more like-- I'm an acquired taste, I think, basically. And I do radio. Yeah, absolutely. Don't hold the onions, OK? Yeah. Who needs millions of people to hear what you have to say? You get the right people. Yeah, I'm like, great. I bought it. Yeah. It's absolutely-- just more headaches. Are you kidding me? The only emails? My computer. I don't like to work, by the way. I don't know about you. I tried to do as little as possible. I mean, it's my motto in life. You're looking at the AIs to help you with that? I don't know. I got to learn about that. I'm a little slow. The thing is, I'm a slow to learn stuff. But once I learn it, I excel. But it takes me a while to make the change. And I'm so-- it's your ways. You know how it is. Oh, yeah. When you're 45,000 years old. You know, I'm just a-- There's so many things. --by 1,000 year old man. Right. There's so many things you could pay attention to. And if you're already in your bliss, you just got to fall. We should go around talking about how many hours alive are you today? Like I'm 26,452 hours alive, or whatever it is, days, or whatever. You can have a whole different metric system of what our measurement of who we are. That's interesting. Yeah. I remember we played with time that way by using the Mayan calendar for a year where we wore Mayan symbols on our bodies instead of just following the Gagorian calendar. And the dream spell, you'd start to experience more synchronicities in your life, for example. Absolutely. We thought we'd check it out. Absolutely. About a year. This is a future as part of that, too. It worked out. It was really interesting to play with other cultures, other cultures of time itself, even, and see what happens. I noticed in your book you were really focused on the Japanese culture. And what is it about the Japanese that got your passion? The reason was I was born in Tokyo, Japan. Oh, OK. So it was really personal. And so I had real citizenship till I was 18. And more importantly, also, I just know that I had a reading for a Japanese person that Fumiko introduced me to this world-class facial yoga teacher, a friend of mine. And she's really an amazing person. She introduced me to this guy, and I read his chart. After the reading, he says, you're so accurate about my life. Can you think you can write a book about Japan and its future? Really? And I said, what do you mean? And he says, I'm a publisher because I didn't even ask him as a professional. Sometimes I don't want to know their profession. I want to just talk about them. Because people sometimes identify too much with their profession. So I talk about the person rather than their profession. And so to find out, he got me a contract to write about Japan's future based on the Mayan prediction. And so then I got into Monday in Astrology, which I'd never done or studied. So I had to study Monday in Astrology and learn that while I wrote the book at the same time. No. I mean, Astrology, that's most more based on the site in the Amherst. My book was published in Tokyo specifically about the Japanese and the United States. And I had to put in the Chinese. And then when I published in English, I expanded those areas to encompass more of American information rather than just Japanese. But a lot of my research was because of that. Yeah, it's interesting. One thing that struck me in your writing was how the Japanese were more aware of their tribal origins than many modern cultures. Well, think of them as indigenous. They're still indigenous. They didn't go anywhere. Right? They're an example of an indigenous future of the past. An indigenous culture that still runs their country today. So a tribal kind of sense of real right or wrong is tribal. And some tribes have very peculiar proclivities. People do some weird stuff. Did you think they're bellwether for our future at all? It's what's happened. I think we have a lot to learn from them in terms of the Sausage of them kind of attitudes. Like, you know, we have to live together like right now. I mean, this is a great example of what is being so divisive in our country. This is the antithetical of what the Japanese would be doing. They'd be coming together trying to understand each other, trying to come to some kind of agreement with each other, not necessarily compromise, but where everybody gets still what they need, but we all can share it together somehow. See, there's this attitude that you have to give up something to gain something. No, you don't. My theory, and this is the book I really want to write. Yeah. There's one and one to me equals three. Yeah. And the way I see it is you have light and dark. Light will never compromise itself. Dark will never compromise itself. So dark and light made an agreement to have the third thing, which is they both coexist and the present moment is the referee, arbiter, umpire, if you will, of everybody wins and loses at the same time and now represents that kind of position. And therefore, this is what we experience is the mark, if you will, like they always say, you lose the mark. If you're sinning, you're losing the mark. The present moment is the mark. The present moment is everything. If you can live in the mark, then you're never off the mark. You're never sinning if you're present. When you lose the present, you're sinning because you're not doing what the present is doing, which is the creation of all things. Yeah. And ultimately, there only is now, but when you're not in the now, where might you be? That's the whole point. If you're all, there is no separation. See, we have to get away from the idea of separation. Yeah. If consciousness should teach us anything, to me, consciousness is like a river of, it's like pure God consciousness. And then we all drink out of that in our physical experience connotes the kind of God consciousness and how we use it is the way we live our life. So I see a as a commingling of God consciousness with our human mortality, awareness and experience. And that's what our lives tend to be an expression and a creation of, basically. Wow. What percentage of our population you think will be able to understand this and live life? In time, hopefully everybody, but we're talking about survival now. They right now, like how many people do you think get this now? Oh, that's why I live in poverty. And I don't have a problem with that because I'm so happy. It doesn't matter. Yeah. Look at that. You're in your bliss. What else is there? Hey, yeah. I mean, I don't need tax accounts. I don't need extra cars. I don't need all that extra bullshit that you can make them out. Yeah, really. Yeah, you're here. That's just more storage costs. Are you kidding me? It's like a bot. So is the now perfect? It's the only thing that is. I guess so then. It gets nothing happens in the present. It's like having a separate sandwich that you can't see the separation. What to gift? Father in law or anybody else for that matter. TP creepers are handmade, super soft, high quality sheepskin slippers. TP creepers keep my feet warm and comfortable all winter long. And at the end of a long day, my feet feel as fresh as they did at the beginning of the day. Solve most all of your gift giving dilemmas. Go to tpcreepers.com and use SC voice for the coupon discount. Time to eat and watch football. Chef Ben here from the back nine grill and bar at the Pasadena Bo exit. Every football game every Sunday starting at 10 a.m. We have dollar wings, a breakfast sandwich and beverage specials. Monday and Thursday night football as well. College ball all day Saturday. Other sports? Oh yeah. Time to eat and watch football. Take the easy off pass a Tampa exit from 17. See you at the nine. Holiday lights 2023. It's the return of a great tradition. The fourth year of holiday lights is open Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights through December 24th at the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds. Bigger, brighter, more lights and chance to experience the magic with family and friends. Get your tickets now at fairgrounds-foundation.org. Brighten your holidays with a magical drive through holiday lights. Ho ho ho. Let me open this up a little bit to our co-hosts who have been patiently listening. I think that a lot of people listening are developing a new understanding of astrology as they are developing a new understanding of spiritual nature of humanity and the shifts that we're going through. And I would love to hear you elaborate on that because it sounded like you have been really riding that wave of how we're going from the prior age into the new age. And you know, especially if you're marking the change from the end of the Mayan calendar, what are we leaving behind as a planetary civilization and what are we opening up to? First of all, I'd like to thank you again for having me. I just this morning, I interview people every week and Henry Seltzer is a good friend of mine who I've been interviewing now for several years. And I know Alan that you guys have met, but I tell you, I really recommend he is so cogent and so brilliant. You know, he went to MIT and started this astograph and he is such a brilliant astrologer. I'm so blessed when he comes on my show. And so I talked to him earlier today and I talked to him. Yeah. And so I told him, and he said to say, "Hello to you guys." And he teaches me so much and we were talking about the planets that he's kind of working with Maha Maha Mahi Maha and Maya and Eris. And so he brings so much depth and he always brings it back to this, the same thing that we've been talking about, the present moment. He was the one that even raised to me the Shakespeare's to be or not to be that in there there's this great quote, "Nothing is good or bad. Thinking makes it so." That was one of my mantras at the age of 15. I realized that when you speak, you better know what you're saying because you're creating something whether you know it or not. So I try to be very careful of what I say and always have been, but it doesn't always work. I see. Let me put this in a little slightly different text. We've gone into a really philosophical bent here. And since astrologers use the fixed knowledge of the position of planets and the angles between them and this kind of archaic mathematical mapping of very physical things, do they believe in predetermination and would prophecy be something that is predetermined or why do we study astrology if there is no such thing as predetermination? A couple of things. One is language is the key here. Now before I answer that, this is important. You use the word predetermination. Well, it does more like the fact that the fixedness of the positions of the planets is considered vibrationally significant to all of the things that are unfolding. And it's a poetry of relationships, really. And yet we want it to be scientific. And so how do those things jive? Okay, Bill, I just want to thank you for clarifying that. That tells me that that word is a created word identifying something that doesn't exist with the assumption that it does exist. That's the problem. I have number one with that word. So I'll answer the question. You're trying about the word predetermination. Yeah, yes, there's an assumption there that there's a future and I've already established I don't accept that there's a future. So that contradicts my knowingness, my point of view. Oh my goodness, you don't accept that there's a future? Well, it's a different paradigm. No, no, I'm saying now is the future. I'm just saying that now is fate. By the way, to answer your question, now is what fate is. Fate is predetermination is now. The word we're talking about is not about the future. The future is now. When you guys are talking about Mr. and Mrs. Future, you're talking about you are now and you're here now and you're doing it now. Because this is the future. I totally agree. We're surfing the future. Absolutely. So do you believe in prophecy? I don't believe in anything. Ah, okay. You. I don't like the word believe. But the word believe is tilt more people than any word on the history of man. You've got to watch your language. Prophecy is more like we see the structure of a seed that's unfolding and we kind of know what's in the seed before it actually sprouts. I would say invisible architecture, mythological, invisible architecture that morphs. Oh, that's nice. Right. That's a good way of looking at it. Of course, Spinoza is like with Einstein. He's my buddy and his worry. If you want to condense him, it's everything happens out of necessity or otherwise he would be otherwise. And since it's not, and everything is necessary. Yes. Or it wouldn't happen. All right. Well, I guess what I'm addressing here is I feel as a as a fellow mystic that I wander between the stories that people put forth as what to expect about the future, such as the Native American drawing that you talked about in the choice point that we're in. Help me prophecy. The Hopi prophecy. Yeah. And so these ideas that we have that are coming from our universal consciousness that is somehow timeless. It's somehow beyond any specific personality that is experiencing the moment. And I'm just wondering how to describe our relationship to that in consciousness. There is something coming and there is some kind of shared consciousness that we all participate in that is heading right for it, you know, just like a seed is embodied with the tree that it will become. Like on some level, we know where we're going, even though it has yet to unfold. And since your current offering is to help people relate to that through astrology, I'm interested in how you understand that relationship. That's a great, great, very intelligent question. I really love that. I've never been asked that. That's a beautiful question. What I would say to you is that every individual I read, it is so personal. It is so about them and their family sometimes that I'll address this question you asked earlier to. As a mystic, what I had learned is that astrology is the most accurate form of definition I've discovered over the years and I've spent many years discovering I lived in Iran for a while. We're from the Sufis and some mystics there. Fairly not well traveled, but I've done a little bit of traveling enough to know that the world's an amazing place. I'm just telling you that I ask my client, I really become a conduit. The chart literally starts talking through me and I say things to them about their intimate and the way they think internally in their minds and their heart. And I say them and I'll say, "Are we talking about you?" Because I'm telling her things that I hear her saying to herself and she looks at me or she'll say, "Absolutely." And I don't take any credit for that. I just learn to get out of the way because if I got too caught up emotionally in what I'm doing, I could never do what I do. What I do is I find extraordinary, but I got to let it be no natural neutral because otherwise I would disturb the force. So astrology helps you tune into that person. It allows me to move myself away from my work. So my emotional impact has no correlation. It's like being Edgar Cayce in a way but in a very mild or more subtle way. Well I guess the reason why I think about things like this and sometimes I haven't really expressed them in words before. It sort of takes being with the right person to know that we might be stumbling over the same ground in universal consciousness. The thing that intrigues me the most is how do I personally and how do the people that I can influence most, the people in my sphere of influence that either love me or know me or affected by me, how do I move in a unified way towards the most wonderful outcome? How does astrology help me do that and what tools can I bring forth to be helpful with? How can people use this tool? And do you believe in the cosmic Google? Well I think the term you use is a wonderful experience or something like that. I would say to you you need to consider really and you know in your heart what would be a wonderful experience and what that would connote and what would have to be entailed. Because I've been around you when I think you were having some wonderful experiences a few times that we've seen that some gatherings because gatherings are always a very joyful place to be and I've been fortunate to be around you at those times. So again we have to look at language and what does it really represent when we speak? Sure. Okay well I would agree with that. I think one of the best ways to be uplifting during times of challenge and during times that are calling forth the best in us it's good to be in a joyous gathering together. So I would say yeah let's use those opportunities. Absolutely. I get the chance to walk these beautiful dogs down in Santa Cruz on the beach and it's such a thrill to be with them to be with such happy joyful sentient beings that just this one have fun and enjoy life every moment and I get so thrilled I feel so fortunate to be able to go down there once in a while and walk the beaches. You guys are so blessed to live in such a beautiful part of the world. Oh it's dog heaven on the beach. Definitely. You want to see that? Don't be happy canons that's the place to go. And something about us getting along with the canons is so important you know and being tight with our other species on this planet. You know it really brings you. Now you guys get to interview all kinds of people. I mean that's don't you do this because you get to learn about things that maybe you're interested in? Absolutely. Absolutely we do this because we're universal scribes and we're very interested in the collection of stories of our time because that is our portrait that you know a certain level we identify as people who are feeding an AI brain. We are collecting cinematic thought forms for an AI largely as well as us as well as our own species and our friends you know we're going to upload himself into a future body. Oh this will be a part of myself. You know not exactly this part of myself but part of myself will be there. Why the Andes Nier as Saint Silicon used to say who used to be by the way in our aerobatic astrology? Yes it depends on how far off you from that nearness. Yeah we're getting close because if there is only now which truly tends to be then the super intelligence of the far future are having their way with us right now and knowing them they will lead us to a great experience. Oh there you go. Oh I like this one of the other things Alan believes is that as long as he is making media for that extra trustful audience then they are the source of the blessings in his life and you know we do have a very blessed life and are very grateful all the time for that and are also believing that everybody has access to it just like you said if you're living your bliss the world is helping you. Yes there's a little floss and you're adding to the piece of the world too. Oh yeah yeah. Rob Brezhne of a partner our audience out here wrote a book about Pro Noia about how the universe is conspiring for our well-being. Right. Yeah. And of course it's since the universe is created with the universal laws of vibration and song and resonance and all those things the more good will and good vibes we put out there the more of that kind of music is shaping the universe. And by the way now that you mentioned that I think we're going to also find culturally the next year and a half to two years of the terms of the media in terms of all of a sudden we might start to see a real shift. I don't know about the movies that now when we grow up growing up that movies had a little bit more of a cultural kind of impact than they do now everything is so factic just way out there in terms of this is so scientific and futuristic it's hard to relate to on a personal level and aware is this unbelievable it is it is. Nonetheless we we still put out our little signal and in our last 40 seconds we want to make sure everyone knows your website. Okay Michael Mercury.com yeah Mercury or Mercury minute dot com Michael Mercury I'm also on Patreon is astrological mystic astrologer and I do a five minute for five bucks you get every day I do a moon journal so you know exactly where the moon is every day and all the aspects it does it every day it's amazing what happens every day astrological. Oh that's fantastic good glad we got that in love hanging with you Michael and it's wonderful hanging out with you Mercury yes I look forward to having you on my show as well thank you so much for having me we'll see you again soon enjoy your peace with you