Leia White IBIS

Cindy Smith, Animal Communicator
Deepening the connections between people and animals.

I facilitate communication between people and the animals in their lives. The easiest way to think of it is to imagine you are speaking one language and your animal is speaking another. I act as a translator between the two of you. My goal is to deepen the connection through mutual respect, compassion and communication.

Communication seems to be one of the major themes of my life. I have a Masters in Education from the University of Northern Colorado. I’ve been a counselor in the mental health field and a teacher in the high school setting.

I worked with developmentally disabled adults for 14 years, many of whom had limited communication skills. They helped me develop my empathetic and telepathic skills as we worked together to communicate. I also worked as a high school teacher for years and found teens to be another misunderstood group. They taught me to listen deeply and not make assumptions based solely on behavior. They showed me great strength and heart in the face of difficult histories, as do many of the animals I meet. Often I find problems between animals and people to be simple misunderstandings.

I draw on these experiences, combined with 35 years of meditation practice in my work with animals. Recently, I’ve begun using sports performance training with people who team with their animals in competitive events. The combination of communication with your animal, and mentally preparing for the event yourself, can often improve performance for both of you!

Since communication is telepathic I don’t need to be in the presence of the animal or person. I work by phone or email with people all over the world.

My guest Nick Pope worked for the UK Ministry of Defense, investigating UFOs and other mysteries officially, for the British Government, leading the media to call him the real Fox Mulder. Because of Nick’s work on these real-life X-Files, he has worked as consultant or spokesperson on numerous UFO and alien-themed movies, TV series, and video games. Nick is a regular contributor to various TV news shows and documentaries, including "Ancient Aliens," "The Basement Office" and "After Contact," the latter of which he created and hosts. He moderates Ancient Aliens Live - a touring event based on the successful TV series. 

Author, journalist and TV personality Nick Pope worked for the British government for 21 years, at the Ministry of Defence.  In the course of his career, he served in a number of different posts, but is best known for work that he did between 1991 and 1994, when he was posted to a division where his duties included investigating reports of Unidentified Flying Objects.  The purpose of these investigations was to see whether anything reported might pose any threat to the defence of the United Kingdom, or suggest the existence of anything that might be of more general defence interest.  Most sightings turned out to be misidentifications of ordinary objects or phenomena, but a small percentage remained unexplained.  Contrary to popular belief, there was no definitive evidence that any of these sightings were extraterrestrial in origin.  However, the Ministry of Defence remained open-minded about the possibilities and took no position on the existence of extraterrestrial life. 

Nick Pope was initially sceptical about UFOs, but his official research and investigation convinced him that whatever the nature of the sightings that remained unexplained, the UFO phenomenon raised important defence, national security and air safety issues.  He was particularly interested in cases where the witnesses were pilots, or where UFOs were tracked on radar. 

More recently, Nick Pope has been involved in the programme to declassify and release the MoD’s UFO files and send them to the National Archives.  This involved selecting some cases that would be of interest to the media, making a film to promote the release and giving newspaper, TV and radio interviews to publicise the story.

Nick Pope left the Ministry of Defence in 2006.  He now works as a freelance journalist and media commentator, writing and broadcasting on a wide range of subjects, including UFOs, the unexplained, conspiracy theories, fringe science, defence, intelligence, space and science fiction. 

Nick Pope works with a wide range of film companies, TV networks and production companies, helping develop ideas for new films, TV shows and documentaries.  He contributes regularly to various news programmes, chat shows and documentaries. 

Nick Pope works with various PR, marketing and advertising agencies, promoting sci-fi films and advertising campaigns themed around the unexplained.  He has worked for clients that include Microsoft, 20th Century Fox and Sony Pictures and has been involved in promoting The X-Files: I Want To Believe and the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still. 

Nick Pope lectures all around the world and this has included addressing the Oxford Union and the Cambridge Union Society, as well as speaking at the Science Museum, the Royal Albert Hall and Global Competitiveness Forum 2011. 

Nick Pope has written four books, all of which have been published by Simon & Schuster.  His non-fiction books are Open Skies Closed Minds, about UFOs, and The Uninvited, about the alien abduction mystery.  Both books made the Top Ten in the Sunday Times list of hardback non-fiction books, with Open Skies Closed Minds reaching number three and staying in the Top Ten for ten weeks.  These books have been translated into various foreign languages.  Nick Pope has also written two science fiction novels about an alien invasion, Operation Thunder Child and Operation Lightning Strike.  There have been discussions about producing a film or a TV miniseries based on these books.

Nick Pope lives in California.

HEDY EPSTEIN (née Wachenheimer) was born August 15, 1924 in Freiburg, Germany. She lived with her parents Ella and Hugo Wachenheimer in Kippenheim, Germany. Her family had lived in Germany for many generations. Both sides of the family originally came from Spain.

Hedy's father operated a dry-goods business with his brother. The business had been started by his grandfather Heinrich Wachenheimer in 1858. Hedy's mother was a housewife. Hedy was their only child.

Hedy was 8 years old when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany on January 30, 1933. She remembers her parents and other adults talking about Hitler, saying that they hoped he would not gain power in Germany, and then, after he did, hoping that he would not remain in office very long.

After that January day, things began to get slowly worse for Jews and other minorities in Germany. A boycott of Jewish businesses. Anti-semitism in schools. Revocation of German citizenship for all Jews. Kristallnacht, known today as Reichsprogromnacht in Germany. Burning of synagogues. Jewish males over the age of 16 placed into "Schutzhaft," or "protective custody," in concentration camps throughout Germany. Finally, all Jews deported into labor or concentration camps. The death of 6 million Jews and 5 million others in those camps.

On May 18, 1939, Hedy went to England on a children's transport. Five hundred children were on this transport, part of the almost 10,000 children that England took in between December 1938 and September 1, 1939, the beginning of World War II. Hedy's parents had tried for many years to leave Germany as a family, but were unsuccessful, due to emigration restrictions in various countries around the world. Finally, after consulting with the 14-year-old Hedy, her parents found a way out for her on the children's transport.

Hedy never saw her family again. Hedy's parents and other family members were deported on October 22, 1940 to Camp de Gurs, a concentration camp in what was then Vichy France. France at that time was occupied by the Nazis. Men and women were separated by barbed wire. Living conditions were horrendous. Hedy, however, did not learn of this until after the war.

Due to an aberration of the war, inmates of the camp in Gurs could correspond with the outside world. Each person was allowed to write one page each week. Hedy's parents sent her letters for the next two years, but they were careful not to mention the atrocious living conditions they had to endure. They wanted to protect their daughter.

In the spring of 1941, Hedy's father was sent to another camp in France, Camp les Milles. In July 1942 Hedy's mother was sent to Camp de Rivesaltes. Between August and September 1942, Hedy's parents and all other surviving family members were sent to the concentration camp Auschwitz. Inmates were not allowed to correspond with the outside world. None was ever heard from again.

The last communication Hedy ever received from her mother was a postcard dated September 4, 1942. The postcard said, "Traveling to the east ... Sending you a final goodbye."

Hedy spent the rest of World War II in England. She went to school and then went to work in a variety of jobs, including a factory producing war materials.

Once the war was over, Hedy went back to Germany to work for the American government. First she was with the US Civil Censorship Division, and later she worked at the Nuremberg Medical Trial, which tried the doctors accused of performing medical experiments on concentration camp inmates. Part of her reason for returning to Germany was to find her family, but she was unsuccessful.

Hedy came to the United States in May 1948. Her only living relatives were an uncle and an aunt who had emigrated to the US in early 1938. Once here, she worked in a variety of jobs. Although she did not realize it at the time, many of those jobs were part of her quest to find her parents and her family.

Soon, Hedy became active professionally and personally in the causes of civil and human rights and social justice. Some of her causes have included fair housing, abortion rights, and antiwar activities. As a peace delegate, Hedy journeyed to Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Cambodia in 1989. Hedy visited the Israeli Occupied West Bank five times since 2003, to witness the facts on the ground. She participated in several non-violent demonstrations, together with Israelis, Palestinians & other internationals, in opposition to Israel's occupation of Palestinian land, the 25-foot high cement wall, and the demolition of Palestinian homes and olive orchards.

Hedy began speaking to audiences in 1970. Her topics include her Nazi Holocaust experiences, her work at the Nuremberg Medical Trial, and her five trips to Palestine since 2003. Equally conversant in English and German, she has spoken in the US, Germany, and Austria to audiences of schoolchildren, college students, and adults. In addition, she has appeared on several radio and television shows as a guest. She is a member of the Speakers Bureau of the St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Learning Center.

In addition to speaking locally, nationally, and internationally, Hedy has appeared on local, national, and international radio and TV programs as a guest.

She has written many articles on social issues which have been published in local, national & international newspapers and journals. In addition, Hedy's autobiography was published in May 1999 by Unrast-Verlag, a German company. The book, titled Erinnern ist nicht genug: Autobiographie von Hedy Epstein ("Remembering Is Not Enough: The Autobiography of Hedy Epstein"), is available in German. The book, written by Hedy, covers her entire life and her experiences. It's ISBN is 3-928300-86-5. Hedy is also a contributor to several current & forthcoming books.

Hedy has received many awards. Among the most recent ones are the 2005 Imagine Life "Education through Media Award" and the 2008 American Friends Service Committee's "Inspiration for Hope Award."

As a young scientist, Carl Johan Calleman was mentored to a PhD in Physical Biology by a member of the Nobel committee in Stockholm, and later served as a Senior Researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Dr. Calleman's 20 year research work with the Mayan calendar has revealed the code map of cosmic cycles allegedly given to an ancient Mayan leader by four 'star people' and then chiseled into the calendar stone. 

Calleman's scholastic presentations on this calendar in worldwide lectures followed publishing of three previous books: Solving the Greatest Mystery of Our Time, The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness and The Purposeful Universe, which have been translated into fourteen languages.

Even though populist media spun the narrative of the Mayan calendar with doomsday predictions and the blockbuster 2012 movie, Dr. Calleman has consistently maintained that the Mayan calendar is about the evolution of consciousness -- changing people on the inside -- in resonance with the cosmic cycles of the quantum field that the Mayan Calendar brilliantly maps.

From this perspective, the Mayan calendar remains the most important source for us to grasp the divine time plan for the evolution of humanity. In fact, with the shift in the Mayan calendar in 2011-2012, the evolution of the human mind to communion with the unified field is only beginning!

"The first novel idea about the rise of civilization in many decades."
James Redfield, author of The Celestine Prophecy

In his recent book, The Global Mind and the Rise of Civilization, Dr. Calleman describes how deep and fundamental the consequences of the shift in the Mayan calendar has been for our worldview, a shift that is only now beginning to make itself known through a new social conscience in our global social networks.

Dr. Calleman describes the pivotal mental shift that created early civilizations; what inspired the ancient Egyptians, Sumerians, Jews and Mayans, outlining a new theory about the historical, psychological, geophysical, and neurological roots of the human mind.

We may finally understand why monuments such as the pyramids and Stonehenge were built at the same time. This theory goes on to explain how a global mind, rather than the individual, has had the power to make empires rise and fall.

This unified plan plays out in a coherent way on our planet because everyone is connected to one and the same Global Mind, as evidenced in the book. Going from the unity of pre-history through the separation of civilization, the process of return to unity with a higher level of civilization has now begun.

The revelations in this book resonate with the new insights of InnerNet futurists and quantum physicists, that the divine destiny of global humanity is now emerging with a profound understanding of the worldwide web of consciousness.  These new insights in The Global Mind and the Rise of Civilization explains 72 factors at http://calleman.com/72-things-that-volume-1-explains/ that previously have not been understood, including where the human mind comes from, what it is and the role of its "downloading" in shaping the early civilizations of humanity.

An entirely new theory has thus been developed to explain why, for instance, the Egyptians only a few generations after having left the stone age, were able to build colossal pyramids with an astounding geometric accuracy. In this new theory, all human creativity is generated by a divine mind in which all humans share and which allows us to develop in concert with one another -- and for events to happen on schedule. This divine mind is mediated by the Earth and -- contrary to what the modern educational system and official science is saying -- the human mind is not a product of the brain. This is one of the most significant paradigm shifts for us to ponder; almost everyone will have to reconsider their worldviews.

A gateway of understanding has opened up to help us comprehend not only collective consciousness and psi phenomena, but also mental disorders. This first volume of The Paradigm Shift Trilogy provides the basis for how humans may craft the global mind of the future, and recreate our world.

For those who are serious about personal and planetary conscious evolution, there is wisdom to be gained with 'The Global Mind'.

Can everyone find and be in their zone, like athletes and musicians?  Can your emotions be keeping you from achieving that zone in your life?  How can your emotions help you?  What can the brain tell us about who you are and what you are likely to do or not do, achieve or not achive?  Professor Dario Nardi has spent decades exploring these questions and so many more, and come up with answers that he shares in his books, classrooms and lectures.  Learn the secrets behind your brain you never knew existed and find your zone!

Dario Nardi – Bio

Radiance House
Dario is founder and director of Radiance House), a media and books publishing company, from 2007 to the present. Radiance House publishes high-quality workbooks, books, foldouts, reference cards, software and related materials in three subject areas: personality/organizational psychology, systems thinking, and fantasy gaming. Many book titles appear at Amazon.com or in affiliate online stores.

Clients span the globe and include brand name and governmental organizations that leverage the benefits of personality for understanding, teamwork, and leadership.

University Teaching
From 1998 – 2012, Dario taught as an assistant adjunct, lecturer or fellow at University of California (Los Angeles) in four programs including Program in Computing, Anthropology, Honors Collegium, and Human Complex Systems.
Courses taught include: Intro. to Programming, Intro. to Programming for the Internet, Intro. to Computing for Social Science & Humanities, Artificial Intelligence, Modeling and Simulation of Social Systems, Modeling and Simulation Laboratory, and Artificial Culture Laboratory. He also acted as the Human Complex Systems faculty advisor and taught numerous independent study courses covering topics such as cognitive processes, neuroscience of personality, and game design. He wrote Modeling and Simulation in the Social Sciences. Moreover, after supervising over 1500 research projects, he edited a collection of best projects in Readings in Formal Modeling and Simulation in the Social Sciences. 

Dario supervised two instances of the Lake Arrowhead Annual Conference on Multi-Agent Modeling in the Social Sciences. He also wrote experiment-based software for fellow instructors on such topics as prospect theory and meme diffusion through friendship networks.
While at UCLA, Dario won three awards: the 2005 Copenhaver Award for Innovative Use of Technology in the Classroom, the Outstanding Professor Award, granted in 2007 by UCLA’s Mortor Board Honor Society, and the 2011 annual Distinguished Teaching award.

As a popular instructor, Dario often used non-traditional techniques including outdoor live-group simulation activities, robot-human stage plays, and software-based audio-visual experimentation to teach New Science concepts such as emergence, attractors, nonlinear feedback, multi-agency, and living systems theory. He is a fan of tools such as Fuzzy Cognitive Maps and Multi-agent Models as ways to better understand complex phenomena.

Personality Theory
Dario gained Myers-Briggs certification in 1994 under the instruction of Dr. Linda Berens and has been intimately involved in product development and research of personality-based tools ever since.

He is the author or coauthor of numerous books on personality including Neuroscience of Personality, 8 Keys to Self-Leadership, Multiple Intelligences and Personality Type, Character and Personality Type, An Introduction to the Personality Type Code, Quick Guide to 16 Personality Types in Organizations, and 16 Personality Types: Descriptions for Self-Discovery.  Moreover, he created the Interstrength Cognitive Assessment, which profiles a person’s use of the 8 Jungian mental functions, and the NeuroPQ, which profiles a person’s use of various cognitive skills by brain region.

Dario has also authored self-help software tools including “Personality Types” and “Love Therapy” for the Apple iPhone / iPad.

In 2009, Dario acted as the conference chair for the International Association of Psychological Type’s biennial conference in Dallas, Texas. He regularly acts as a keynote speaker and webinar and workshop presenter for regional, national and international organizations such as Google Inc., Providence Tarzana Medical Center, CPP-Asia Pacific, Attentional Ltd, and Danish Center for Leadership, among others.

Dario takes a systems approach to personality. This includes the use of multiple complementary models to triangulate a person’s best-fit personality type. By “type”, he means a sustainable pattern of activity, or in mathematical terms, a strange attractor within a living dynamic system (after all, persons as implemented as dynamic systems, not as statistical ones).

Neuroscience Research
Since 2007, Dario has conducted intensive and varied hands-on neuroscience research using EEG technology. He focuses on practical application of the brain research and personality to coaching, counseling, educating, leading, and such. For a free 90-minute video for Google in 2011, please visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGfhQTbcqmA.

For an in-depth report of his ongoing research, please see “Neuroscience of Personality: Brain-Savvy Insights for All Types of People” 

Dario’s research focuses on links between cognitive skills, emotional dynamics, personality characteristics, and behavior as expressed through local and global patterns of activity in the neocortex. In his research, he asks subjects to try a wide variety of tasks–from math and music to story-telling and speed-dating, over the course of 2-3 hours. During this time, subjects tend to display recurrent patterns in frequency and amplitude for use of particular neocortical regions as well as across the whole neocortex. Among the most interesting patterns is a “flow state” that occurs when a person engages in creative expertise or a pallet of other activities distinctly related to personality characteristics.

Dario’s system and methodology for neuroscience of personality is covered a pending patent. In addition to presenting ongoing results, he focusing on likely implications for skill development, coaching, communication, leadership, problem solving, education, and other application areas. As part of this, certified professions may use pencil-paper and free online self-assessment tools such as the NeuroPQ.

Recently, Dario is developing use of EEG with small TV and film audiences, gamers, students, and work groups to objectively evaluate and improve the effectiveness of particular media, material, and processes, such as the likely reception of a pilot TV show.

Educational Background
Dario conducted his doctorate in Systems Science (1995-1998) from the State University of New York and his bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering (1988-1992) from the University of Southern California, where he enjoyed USC’s Academic Scholarship for Excellence, a full-tuition undergraduate scholarship.

His educational background also includes East Asian languages and cultures and creative writing. Dario began studying Japanese as a high school freshman in 1984. In 1987, he acted as the student representative to greet the then-Crown Prince (now Emperor) of Japan in his trip to Washington D.C. Later, in 1989-1990, Dario attended Waseda University in Tokyo for his college sophomore year where he took courses in both English and Japanese.

As part of his dissertation work, Dario created SOCIALBOT, an animated interactive character that uses everyday English to share socially-relevant information. The informing approach to design was “social situated action” where intelligence involves coordination between agents. 

Hobbies
Dario has been involved in tabletop role-playing games since 1982. He is author 4 well-received hardcover game books including: Secrets of Pact Magic and Villains of Pact Magic the popular d20 system as well as Radiance Players Guide and Radiance Masters Guide, a standard-alone game for adventures “in Tesla’s gilded age of electrotech”. Finally, he is coauthor of Pact Magic Unbound Vol. 1

Burning Man: Dario is a huge fan of this annual festival held in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. He has attended every year since 2007.
For relaxation, Dario enjoys the beach, hiking and surfing as well as speculative films and other media.

Formative Years
Dario was born on Jan 3, 1970 in Los Angeles, where he lived until age 5. He also lived in Ojai, California. At age 5 he moved to Acra Beach in Barbados, the southern-most island in the Caribbean. From 11 to 18 he lived in Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb of Washington D.C., and graduated Walt Whitman High School with honors and an all-expense paid trip to Japan in the summer of 1988, sponsored by the Japan-America Society via their Japan-American Society Summer Fellowship in Japan, in the spirit of promoting peace and cross-cultural understanding.

James McGrath is an American, who has competed five times in the American Ninja Warrior tournaments. In his first attempt, on American Ninja Warrior 2, his run ended early, when he failed on the Quad Steps.

On American Ninja Warrior 3, he was a walk on competitor from Seattle, WA who slept in a van to be a walk-on. In that competition he placed 29th in the Qualifying Round and 13th in the Semis. He did very well in Boot Camp and that earned him a spot in SASUKE 27. In the tournament, he was able to blitz through the first two stages with little trouble, completing Stage 1 in with 22.24 seconds to spare and had SASUKE 27's fastest Stage 2 time with 18.84 seconds left on the clock. However, he ultimately failed on the Ultimate Cliffhanger after failing the transition to the small fifth ledge.

He also competed on American Ninja Warrior 4 and was one of the favorites to earn total victory. He had the 2nd fastest time in the Northwest Regional Qualifiers, and the fastest time in the Northwest Regional Finals, giving him a late run in the Las Vegas Finals. He easily beat Stage 1 with just under 19 seconds to spare, making him of the 24 finalists to advance to Stage 2. However, his downfall came at Stage 2, where he suprisingly failed on the Slider Drop by making the bad choice of jumping before the drop, shifting his weight to one side and not landing the left side.

In American Ninja Warrior 5, McGrath completed the Venice Beach Finalists with the fastest time and he cleared the First Stage in the Las Vegas finals with 38.47 seconds left. In the second stage, he blazed through all the obstacles and finished with the second fastest time on the stage with 35.66 seconds left on the clock. On the third stage, however, he wasn't able to hang on while transitioning to the second board on the Floating Boards and failed.

In American Ninja Warrior: USA VS Japan, James was apart of team America. In the first stage, he went up against Yamamoto Shingo, and he beat him when he couldn't make it up the Soritatsu Kabe. Then, in the second stage, he went up against Asa Kazuma, he beat him as well, as he failed the Double Salmon Ladder and James did a victory lap on the stage. In the third stage, James went up against Urushihara Yuuji, where he went out on the Floating Boards again, but Yuuji also went on the same obstacle and James won the match barely by beating him to the second board by a few seconds. He was the only competitor to attempt all three stages.

So far, in American Ninja Warrior 6, he has completed the qualifying round in the second-fastest time. In the Venice Finals, he failed the Body Prop but still finished in the Top 15, qualifying him for the Las Vegas Finals.

Kurt Koontz grew up with a lot of the outdoors in Boise, Idaho. He studied business at the University of Puget Sound, then returned to his hometown to rise through the ranks as a sales executive for Micron Technology. While working, he traveled on business across the U.S. and the world. When he retired at age 36, he took to adventure travel—mostly by bicycle across Europe and in the Western U.S. and Canada.

It wasn’t until 2012 that he began writing about his adventures. That year, he walked the 500-mile El Camino de Santiago, the Spanish pilgrimage route dating from medieval times. This journey, he says, was a very different kind of travel.

On the Camino, he lived moment to moment, not knowing where he would find the next meal or sleep the next night. As he walked the 1,300-year-old route, he heard unforgettable stories from other pilgrims and took a deeper look at his own life stories. Recorded in his journal and e-mails home, they became the foundation for his first book, A Million Steps, due out late this year.

He now lives and writes near family and friends, on a tree-lined creek in Boise.