I wonder if there's peace at school today it can be tough getting through the kids but it's your job to make sure they're wearing your seat belts never give up until they buckle up a message from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration the visit safer car dot gov slash kids buckle up for more information me a cat moving in with a new human it took a little getting used to she sees weird game she likes to play like this giant Feather she sticks it in my face I swatted away she sticks it in my face I swatted away it's almost like she thinks I enjoy it but seeing how much fun she gets out of it well I guess it makes it all worth it he adds a person is the best thing to happen to a shelter pat be that person adopt brought to you by the Ad Council and the shelter pet project. A 10 here's your chance to score tickets to check out Cirque de la symphony Thursday December 7th the Davy Symphony Hall register to win tickets now at Radio dot com a talented team of entertainers and gymnast descend upon Davies Symphony Hall for an odd spiraling event of great music and spectacular acrobatics here the San Francisco Symphony perform a festive selection while watching metal women fly tumble and dance the evening Oyo purchase tickets again event info at s.f. Symphony dot org. M. M m m. M m m m m. M m m. M. M. M m m m m m m m. M. M m Good evening everyone you're in the right place at the right time this is coast to coast am glass out of the Mojave Desert. Blazing across the land and slamming into your radio like a supercharge nanoparticle of unobtainium. Greetings from the coldest body ist most outrageous city in the world the planetary capital of sun the fun of sin sex and secrets my not so humble hometown Vegas Nevada My name is George Knapp or occasional host designated driver of the airwaves and moderator of tonight's upcoming cavalcade of conversation. A beautiful brisk autumn evening here in the desert we've got quite a program lined up for you tonight I've already heard from a few of the listening parties ready to join in coming up we have a terrific trio of engaging guests on big questions scientific ethical psychological physiological and spiritual mysteries and challenges as you know one occasion here we engage in what film critics would call the willing suspension of disbelief we listen to some pretty wild stuff we give it time to percolate in our brains have some fun what we don't necessarily adopt as gospel everything we hear from every guest tonight we go to the heart of that construct and will try to figure out why we believe some of the things we believe why we're drawn to seemingly improbable. Subjects' whether this is some sort of substitute for religion driven by the same kind of human impulses not sure if any of you saw a major piece in Rolling Stone this past week the writers spent 9 months 9 months healing Ilan Musk they did multiple in-depth interviews they watched him as he navigated these 4 corporations He's founded $4000000000.00 corporations meaning each one of them is worth a 1000000000 not sure anyone has ever done that before and they've got ideas about what makes him tick and it's a really interesting piece because Musk is such a compelling character and and man as you probably know he wants humans to get to other planets and quick before we blow ourselves up or some other calamity wipes us out one of the story is that was published as kind of a quick q. And a with Musk in which he's asked existential philosophical type questions he's not having any of that he's an engineer is an engineer is mind it's rooted in physical reality and for so some amusing stuff in there as you will see if you read it for his vision to come true humans need to kind of get to it kick it into high gear What are we equipped for long spaceflight How would our bodies react to years in space and microgravity was an article a few days ago about an Earth like planet that was discovered in our general neighborhood only 11 light years away only 11 years traveling at the speed of light as if we can do that it's not only an enormous engineering feat but physiological as well my 1st guest tonight will share with us new research about what happens to the human brain after extended periods in space and undergoes some startling changes that will have to be addressed if we're ever going to become a spacefaring civilization on a large scale Dr Kristin Willem Meyer is a neuro scientist who's done cutting edge work on the human brain and she will join me a few minutes from now. In hour to another academic Dr Paul Kingsbury returns to the program to talk about his research and to why we believe and pursue topics like U.F.O.'s ghosts Sasquatch he makes no judgment about whether any of those are real or not but is interested in what draws us to those topics the cultural forces at work and I suppose coast to coast but would be one of those cultural forces then in our 3 a pioneer in the exploration of the cauldron of belief systems spiritual religious psychological you full logical Dr very Downing is a minister an author with a degree in physics he 1st wrote about U.F.O.'s in the Bible almost 50 years ago and he's been pounded by pretty much all sides ever since Christians don't like it scientists don't like it you follow just don't like it and from that I guess we could conclude he must be doing something right if he can manage to tick off just about everyone secular religious and otherwise has written a new book 49 years after the 1st one it is not a namby pamby turn the other cheek approach Dr Downing takes no prisoners I think you get a kick out of his take on this intersection between biblical accounts scientific theories and modern u.f.o. Lore it's a it's a heck of a right. Our webmaster tonight Greg Bishop and I have called together our usual assortment of items and oddities we call it naps news you can find it on the coast to coast website tonight stories include interviews with 3 prominent scientists regarding a recent effort to beam out a message to suspected e.t.s. Or a planet where intelligent life might exist Suffice to say the scientists are not convinced that's a good idea also a story about intuition asking whether intuition might represent a higher form of intelligence maybe the highest a NASA scientist says he's tired of answering questions about impending doom because of the rogue planet never you can feel the exasperate and kind of losing out of the pages of the story also a story about international efforts to establish protocols that would control killer robots I'm not talking about some site 5 movie. Independent robotic war machines are in development now and we all are familiar with the term Skynet right this story suggests we need to figure this out now before we pass a certain threshold and it has it has my full attention while you're on the coast website check out how to become a coast Insider You can listen anytime you want as many times as you want for pennies a day it's a pretty good deal you can also subscribe to George nor'east television program beyond belief Likewise a good deal the link is there on the coast site with that let's assume the position bring in the dog and cat put on a pot of Joe slide into those flannel jammies plop yourself down in a comfy spot turn down the lights and turn up the radio because we're about ready to rumble in a moment Dr Kristen Well Meyer tells us about one of the perils of long range space travel and other brain News I'm George Knapp and this is coast to coast am. This is Michael Medved here with Mike Stahl from Health Markets helping folks find the right Medicare coverage the news reports say that the rates might be going down but government projects across the Medicare plan put the crease this year so you have to ask yourself are you getting the best rate Health Markets offers a free service with access to thousands of Medicare plans nationwide to help folks maximize their benefits and say What is it people need to keep in mind then Rollman in the right plan is not automatic with so many Medicare options that can be confusing my advice don't go it alone get unbiased help to find a plan that may cost less and cover more with lower co-payments more choices like dental and vision and the freedom to choose your doctors with the enrollment deadline only weeks away it's important to act now our health markets Medicare assistance is free Thanks Mike this is Michael Medved for health markets for your free medicare assistance call 806454408 That's 806-454-4088 extension 0645. 4408 Geico presents unhelpful home improvement how to use overhanging trees present a real danger during high winds falling branches can damage roofs and windows So today I'll show you how to protect your home by wrapping it in bubble packaging all you need is a staple gun and 142000 feet of bubble packaging Let's get started. 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Welcome back you know the last few years have been a remarkable time for learning about the human brain a lot of money is poured into research projects there are now tens of thousands of scientists around the planet who are looking into the brain must be akin to like the space race of the sixty's Dr Kristen Well Meyer is a neuroscientist who's written or co-written $52.00 peer reviewed papers about brain research focusing on among other things traumatic brain injuries p.t.s.d. . And has written extensively about how the brain is affected by health and nutrition she's here on coast to coast for the 1st time Kristin welcome. To listen to like. Boy your resume and publications The list goes on for pages very impressive I thought. Be before we kid before we get to that the space issue can we talk about just brain research in general I don't want to exaggerate it but I would think it would be a really exciting time to be a brain scientist right now oh my gosh I love my field of study I've been doing it for next year it'll be 20 years and some of the work that I really enjoyed doing his then studying the impact of repetitive because of impacts in professional football players you know that's a really big issue now in the news and the most exciting part about doing that research is we've showed that we can rehabilitate brain function in these athletes so I really like to ability to do this kind of work and show that we're able to make Will manageable changes in the brain if we make lifestyle changes. I want to come back to that in that in the general topic of brain research there was a big push I think about 3 years ago the New York Times did an article in 2014 and in essence was saying the great paradox of studying the brain is the more we learn the less we know 100000000000 neurons a 1000 trillion neural connections so studying them individually or in small groups says one neuro scientists is like trying to understand a t.v. Program by looking at a single pixel is that about right is absolutely true so I initially began as a nervous scientist doing exactly that working in a laboratory and fighting how individual cells communicate with one another and the 2nd part of my career I started doing work in patients and doing narrow imaging studies which sort of pick someone who will approach to looking at the brain so the brain is so extraordinarily complex and again we can look at it at the level of a single cell and had a cellular signaling mechanism of genes that have a communicated result from these diseases and then we can sort of pull the camera lens back and look at the broader clinical picture of what happens in the body when we made these changes of very small changes that happen at the level of the individual cell that could result in diseases that was associated with aging which is now a degenerative diseases and inflammation and heart disease so it is the more the more you study the more you want to know there's a cliche of course you've heard it a 1000000 times I would imagine that we only use 10 percent of our brain and I don't know if that's true or not but it seems to me I read something that it's not exactly true but there's another thing I read that said that our brains capacity is probably 10 times greater than what we realized that it's it's like it must be like exploring deep space it is the brain has an extraordinary operational capacity and you know it's been likened to a supercomputer. And I think people don't really understand and appreciate the complexities of the brain as you've clearly illustrated 100000000000 neurons a 100 trillion So now take connections and based on the firing patterns that will allow us to create certain actions in our life so I think what people really need to appreciate is we need to take really good care of this or again because it really is extraordinary of what rules how we stand how we perceive the actions that we take in our lives that's what I like to try and instill when I'm working with clients. Let's jump into this article New England Journal of Medicine published this recent paper about the effects of microgravity on the human brain and it studied the brains of astronauts been up there for extended periods mostly I think on the International Space Station give me the broad picture of what they found. This was an extraordinary study and it's actually the 2nd study done on astronauts who have gone into space so essentially what they wanted to study is again the effects of microgravity on the brain during faceplate the Specifically with regard to the alterations in the anatomical configuration of the brain and the fluid and that's where the spinal fluid base is the reason why this is so important is these anatomic and pressure changes that we see in the brain are causing many astronauts to spend a long duration of time on the International Space Station to return with this syndrome that's called the visual impairment intercranial pressure center on or the I for short so as you can imagine this syndrome is creating visual deficits that it can occur during a sleigh and can last for years upon return I happened to read a statistic where 80 per cent of the astronauts are reporting having the I syndrome and also mentally it's going to impact our ability to send astronauts into space on these longer duration missions which is what would be required if we're going to explore space travel to Mars which I had read could take up to 30 months roundtrip So this study is really investigating why this happens in this particular syndrome is caused by a welling of the optic nerve and flattening in the back of the eye that's causing these visual problems and again you brought up you on Lost in the beginning of this segment if we want to have space tourism and and people out in this space we're going to. I have to figure out ways to correct these deficits and south one astronaut I had read. Started his mission with 2020 vision and after spending time on the International Space Station he returned where his vision was 2111 years later it's at 2050 so we really want to be careful so this particular study was really looking at again what happens to the brain when we're in microgravity the group had previously shown and what we call an earth analogue of microgravity It's when we put somebody on a boat and hold it down so it's called a head down. Hills position and what it does is the legs are of the head is down and that causes this forward and flows theory or shift in the brain and you get an increased density of brain tissue at the top of the head with you get into action of the river spinal fluid in the spaces at the top of the head and they see an increase in ventricular volume so what they wanted to do is. These results that we're seeing in this 1st analog of play are these what we see and after not for long and short duration missions and. So essentially what they did is they. $34.00 astronaut 16 of them had done a long duration mission involving stays on the International Space Station which they were there for an average of 5 months. And compare that to 16 astronaut who did missions of short duration as part of the space 'd shuttle program so that's a 2 week program and they have financially spent about 13 days in space what they found was really fascinating and it was consistent with what they saw on this Earth Earth based analog So 1st they found that there was an impact on both the frontal lobe and parietal lobe the frontal lobe being involved in higher level processes executive function and decision making and applied a low still involved in integrating sensory information on the shelf and navigation in touch with they found was narrowing of the space between these 2. So this anatomical region of the central focus was narrower when that place certain of the implications of this finding that the visual images of the M.R.I.'s clearly show that the 2 brain regions look we gather. Making is that there is some kind of pressure that's happening in the brain like fluids rise from the lower part of the body into the brain or something like that well so what happens we've got to think when you're on Earth you have a gravity that's helping to hold the fluids down towards the feet when you're in microgravity where it's essentially 0 G.'s or weightlessness you don't have that anymore so the fluids are now distributing evenly throughout the body and not wheeling moving here getting more of the pressure that's in the head. If you've ever seen or not who's been on the space station you see their head sometimes less will big and husky because you've got one of these fluids in this injection that's happening in the head so what they're showing is not only. Not only do we see the squeezing together of these frontal and cried aloud for the narrowing of this space there are also. Seeing that in astronauts who are on the longer duration mission there is an upward shift of the brain in the brain stem towards the top of the head and with all of the astronaut in the long duration mission showing this result but not seeing the. Short duration mission astronaut that's really intriguing they. Don't know where they also showed narrowing of the cerebral spinal fluid space at the top of the head which again they showed with all of the astronauts in the long term ration mission and only one of the astronauts in a short duration flight. They also showed astronaut had a patient. Ask window which helps connect the 3rd and 4th center cause in the brain that helps explain what that means in the brain we have 4 bank trickles that produce they've got cells called the Craig plexus that helps reduce the rate of the spinal fluid and you want this fluid flowing seamlessly throughout the brain the service honestly would help to protect the brain from impacting the skull and brain fits nicely in a sort of point forward when we. Have the brain or the top of the head and they're going on this way the spinal fluid. It's showing that there's a pressure that's occurring in the brain and that pressure could be in passing regional flavor of blood flow which could be moving this way I think Senator I'm that we're seeing in the astronaut who on these longer duration missions so some pretty obvious challenges there if you're talking about going to Mar