Welcome to Skeptico where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers thinkers and their critics I'm your host Alex Icarus and Now we all know that psychic mediums seem to offer a unique view into these extended consciousness realms And I'm always talking so much about and Although the best science seems to suggest that there's a reality to what mediums do Sciences backing that up like our friend Julie Beischel has done so well We're also left with a lot of questions about the apparent contradictions Unanswered questions and then when we get into NDE science it gets even more confusing There's questions about what is the near-death experience really all about how does it relate to the after-death? communication that mediums are bringing back and then if we add to the mix things like terminal lucidity in shared NDE's the whole field can get even more complicated fortunately, fortunately, fortunately We have today's guest Deborah Diamond who has used her extraordinary gifts as a psychic medium along with her Really amazingly keen Analytical abilities although as you'll find out it's not so surprising her Former career where she was a very accomplished Wall Street money manager and professor at John Hopkins University where she taught students Some of the tricks of the trade in terms of investments and investment analysts But she had that kind of background and then she's brought that with these Intuitive psychic abilities that she's honed to bring us just a very unique and emotionally powerful perspective on The entire dying process so this is really I think going to be a terrific talk Deborah's going way beyond after-life communication and readings to actually doing research And I think as I hope we talk about Some groundbreaking research in NDE science stuff that hasn't been done But is being approached in a scientific way and and now with this latest book that we're going to talk about today Diary of a death doula. She's actually shared what she's learned Going into the hospice Environment and bringing everything that she knows about NDE's and about after-death communication Into working with people who are approaching death This is really some amazing work Deborah. Your books are just great. I couldn't stop reading I was absorbing and making notes and running out of time and that was my only limitation But I'm really really glad that I've met you and that you're joining me here today on skeptic coast So thanks so much for being here. Oh, thank you Alex It's a pleasure to be here and as I said, I'm a big fan of yours So it's especially great to be able to share my new book with you and talk about My first book life after near-death and really this whole area as you said in your introduction about near-death experiences after death life after death and After-death communication and really this whole issue as you pointed out of how science treats The and I'll put it in quotes the science of being a psychic and the near-death experience and really You know, it's one of those situations where never the two shall meet We live material world We most of us encounter the world through our senses through our five senses. We hear things. We see things We touch things. That's how we relate to our life here on earth but the fact of the matter is that there's much more going on in the invisible world than we know and Science, you know, you talk about how science looks at near-death experiences or psychics Science doesn't even have a vocabulary to describe what consciousness is So I think that to rely on science to describe this invisible world is very difficult because We don't have the Playbook yet. We don't have the tools in the scientific community to define what really happens in this other realm I'm with you all the way and I always bring that up that Any talk about measuring consciousness is thrown out the window when we can't even define consciousness and by the prerequisites of science We have to be able to measure things and the only thing we can understand if consciousness is fundamental Which is the paradigm shift. Well, then there is no measuring You know, we're back to the how many angels fit on the head of a pin thing We'll tell me that first and then we can measure the rest of it But within that when what I thought and we'll talk about this more as we get into this Discussion this conversation, but what's really cool about what you bring Deborah and I hope you can You can bring this out without, you know, everyone always leads in talking about you with this Wall Street analyst and CNBC commentator Extraordinary background by Johns Hopkins University. Oh professor great stuff but what that really is saying and it comes through in your work is that you have an analytical mind and a Scientific approach, which is what we need. So I'm all for talking about the limits of science But at the same time I want to promote the fact that you've taken the best of the scientific method really and applied it to your work Like I mean I it was extraordinary for me to think of the idea that in your first book And we're going to talk about both books today because I think if people are not familiar with life after near-death They really got to pick it up But if they're interested in near-death experience and they haven't come across that book like I have to admit I hadn't you know immediately bought it and said I have to I have to read this It's very affordable on Kindle. You can pick it up. But here is the methodology here. Someone says, okay I have to apply multiple Means of looking at this have to do qualitative analysis a good Questionnaire then I have to do a complete interview and then Deborah says Why don't I use my psychic abilities and do a psychic reading and Combine that to the work and then as we'll talk about in your second book You kind of do the same thing in hospice only it isn't for a research purpose But it's to assist these people in the transition process. You say I Know I have these abilities these advanced intuitive psychic abilities. Why don't I apply that to the process? so that is science that that we can Utilize in kind of moving forward and answering some of these questions. So I think it's great. See you're all about science Thank you You did a just a terrific job of explaining what I've been what I do in both of those books and in my work My background is a very kind of left-brain Professional background I come out of the as you mentioned I come out of the investment business And I was an analyst a healthcare research analyst for the first ten years So there is a system, you know for how you do Analytical work and I bring that with me even though I'm doing something different now as a psychic I like to use my background in my training and you know It seemed to me when I wrote my first book life after near death, you know I thought about it and I thought you know I'm a psychic and people come to psychics for all sorts of reasons they ask personal questions I'm also a medium and they like to people want to connect with those who've passed over and that's all fine And I enjoy helping people But it you know all along it occurred to me that I have these abilities That set me apart I think from some other psychics and mediums I come from a very traditional Analytical background and I wanted to bring that into my work because I think it's important. It hasn't been done in the Near-death arena, you know when I first started doing research into near-death experiences my take on the Category was that people were very focused on the narrative, you know, that is I had a near-death experience I went through a tunnel. I saw a light I had a life review and I came back and people were fascinated by that and I get it it is extraordinary It's also been promoted by television and the movies because it's it's very visually it could be very visually dramatic So that for most people is their experience, you know, that's what they'd heard about near-death experiences but I Had an encounter in 2013 I was asked to read for a famous NDE year who was struck by lightning and came back with abilities He didn't have prior to his experience and when I did the reading for him I was getting all sorts of symbols that were literally out of this world which is not a tradition, you know, that doesn't traditionally happen in the reading and After the reading I started thinking, you know, what happened to him? Why does he have these abilities and gifts and what's he supposed to do with them? And what about other NDE years? What do they get if anything and when I came home that evening? I thought let me just Google near-death experience after effects Let me see how much research has been done and I googled it and I found out there hadn't been any research done So I said well, I guess I'll have to do the research now It wasn't a stretch because this was my background. I was a health care research analyst So figured somebody must be wanting me to do this, you know, how many psychics are there who were also health care research analysts But I wanted to bring a discipline to what I was doing. I didn't want to just Regurgitate people's stories. I mean, yes, I know that they're interesting, but I wanted to bring more legitimacy to it Can I interject a question? Yeah, because as I was reading that in the book the one thing that was unanswered to me is I Understand your interest in these Extraordinary gifts that these people Seem to have after the near-death experience and that becomes even more clear in the book because here you're talking about like a guy who Becomes really good at softball all of a sudden even though it'd been kind of a nerdish on athletic guy And now he's like Frank softball player or improved vision physical changes that can be measured But I'm wondering at this point as you're telling the story. Why did you think? This was such an important aspect for you to research. I mean these physical Why did that draw you in the physical kind of Changes that you found. Do you have any sense of why why that drew you there? Yeah, absolutely, and it's a great question because the Stories that people were telling about their NDE's NDE's last for seconds or minutes of earth time and then they're over but the after effects last for the rest of your life and That really hadn't been addressed, you know people are coming back from these experiences with all sorts of after effects from the Psychological to the social to the physiologic and cognitive and this really hadn't been discussed And you know the universe is dropping these people back on earth where they're to live the rest of their lives And they have lots of questions and they're uncomfortable and it's very hard to manage with one foot out in the universe and one foot on earth and You know, I just felt there was a lot more to the NDE than just you know, I went through the tunnel and I saw the light I thought there was much more to it than much more sort of behind the curtain Except what was behind the curtain? We didn't really know, you know So I thought well That's where I can kind of put my shovel in the set You know in the dirt and and see what I can find out And I felt that that would be really important and I found that after the book came out I have heard from thousands of NDE years and ST years people who've had spiritual transformative experiences who've said to me, you know, I Didn't have an NDE, but I had something and people don't talk about these experiences It's not the kind of thing where you go to work on a Monday morning and you're hanging out at the water cooler And someone says would you do over the weekend? I went to the movies or I had a near-death experience I mean people don't talk about these if they talk about it to their families or family say You'll get over that. So they keep it to themselves. You should at this point Maybe we should make clear what you mean by the spiritually transformative experience We've talked about a little bit on this show, but what are we including and not including in that? I mean a profound Kundalini experience that someone has while while they're meditating is that it or maybe someone is Your Christian and their Catholic they're in church and they're saying the rose and they're overcome by this Feeling of light and love is that a spiritually transformative experience? How are you defining it? What are their criteria? Yeah, so it's another great question and the the Classic definition for near-death experiences and spiritually transformative experiences is that you come back to Life unable to go transformed unable to go back to your prior life. That's it You know, it's not how many boxes you can check off. It's not, you know, if you went through a tunnel It's not if you saw a light. It's not if you you know saw a beautiful landscape It's whether you come back transformed unable to go back to your prior life now with near-death experiences. They tend to be Pigeon hold as relating to trauma a drowning an accident a heart attack something that happened on the opera, you know in an operating room Spiritually transformative experiences don't necessarily involve trauma and sometimes people don't even know that they've had one But it might be something like, you know, and this relates to the To being a death doula and sitting bedside at hospice if you're sitting bedside with someone who's actively dying or you sat with someone who actually did die You know that there's an air of the sacred in the room and that the energy there's a shift in the energy and Many people who have sat bedside with someone who's past are exposed to that energy and they themselves go through some sort of Transformation some sort of spiritual transformation because their energy is experienced a shift as well There's not a lot of work done on this There's not a lot of research, but I can tell you from the I talked to thousands of people I give a lot of talks people come for readings and you know There just hasn't been a lot of work done on it, but I See a pattern in my work I see lots of people who you know come to me and tell me they know that they're different They've experienced a shift and first question is you know, I go through a checklist. Has this happened to you?  Yes. Why? Well, I'm just saying you do that checklist thing because I understand that the questionnaire Kind of thing that you did in the research for your first book Life after near-death and it's impressive for the reasons I said it you're really an Analyst who's kind of getting a scientist like you said in terms of when I asked you why you did it You were true scientists saying hey because no one had done it and we had to fill in that gap in the knowledge base to you Know pulled out the field. I mean that's extraordinary But now I just want to be clear about this because I think your work is is so important I want people to understand and I want to understand how you do it So are these the kind of questions you'd you generally ask people when they come for a reading? Or is it just in certain circumstances that you would try and fill in those? Yeah, it's just in certain circumstances, you know someone is either I'm either reading for them or I meet them somewhere and then you know They know about my work and they start talking to me and they say I don't know I I don't know what happened You know, I just don't feel the same, you know, and I have a mental checklist I don't go through a whole checklist with them and you know, there's certainly no Structure around it like there was in the first book but I know enough at this point that I can ask a few questions to dig a little deeper and You know, it's funny.  So I mean, that's just who I am, you know, I I'm a Virgo I get in there. I ask a lot of questions and I you know, pull it apart until I could find what I'm you know the answer or a pattern or You know after enough research you find patterns that start to you know, make sense But with the spiritually transformative experiences they have a lot in common with near-death experiences and Certainly I'm hearing a lot more about them these days because all of mankind is going through some sort of transformation right now. So there are lots of people who are Relating to me that you know, they've had some sort of shift I I don't have the answer to why that's happening or why all these why it's happening to all these people But I can tell you that you know anecdotally anyway that I see quite a bit of it But with the spiritually transformative experiences, they don't always know It's not like a near-death experience where they could say, you know, I I was in an accident and God spoke to me and you know, this and that With st e spiritually transformative experiences They're a little more undefined Okay, fair enough. I'll tell you what I have Prepared some slides that might guide us. I call it skeptical jeopardy and I'm going to let you pick some of these but I want to start us off because we've Kind of referenced the doula thing a little bit the death doula Which is going to be a new term for a lot of people It is the title of your second book diary of a death doula Like I said, it's going to be a new topic for a lot of people. So let's talk about what what a doula is and How you came to work in hospice care and what that Was all about for you because I think it really is interesting and it's interesting What happened? So tell us about the doula thing. Yeah. Yeah, I would love to and I and I love the skeptical jeopardy. That's so cool so I think many people have heard of birth doulas. These are midwives who help usher life into the world and death doulas are Similar and that they help to usher life out. It's a relatively new Concept, uh, nobody knows for sure how many death doulas there are right now, but it's probably in the thousands and Because it's a because it's something new There's every program and there are different programs to be a death doula every program Uh is a little different. There are some death doulas who get involved with wills who get involved with the families who get involved with legacy projects who get involved with the funerals and As I said every program is different in my program I sit with a bedside with the actively dying And actively dying is defined as the last 24 to 48 hours of life now If you've had any loved ones who've passed, you know, that's uh doctors and medical staff aren't always Accurate in terms of predicting end of life, you know, somebody you might think that they're going to pass in 24 to 48 hours And they could still be there a month later But generally these patients are non responsive And uh their physical body is shutting down The reason that I wanted to be Of service in hospice was because when my mother passed away Almost 20 years ago Hospice came to the house and they did an extraordinary job I was very impressed and one day one of the hospice professionals handed me a piece of paper And she said you might want to read this and I thought you know It probably has to do with medication or maybe even funeral arrangements and I said it aside but When I finally picked it up and I read it it said If your soul is ready and your body isn't you don't leave And if your body's ready and your soul isn't you don't leave When your body's ready and your soul is ready you leave now This was before I was working as a psychic and a medium And you know, I read this and I thought wow, this is a lot more than I expected from hospice. This was pretty profound And it stuck with me and I knew that I wanted to do something to be of service I knew I wanted to work for hospice And I thought about it. I thought about it for about 15 years and eventually I I trained their training programs to be death duelers and I trained and I Went to work at at hospice, but I wanted to sit with the actively dying, you know, some people Do volunteer work at hospice and they're they're going in there and they're working with patients and helping patients who are still cognitive and You know, maybe around for quite a while I felt that because I'm a medium and I I speak with people who've passed all the time I felt that I could I would be very comfortable sitting with somebody at end of life And that's pretty much what happened, you know, a lot of people are afraid including families They don't want to be there at that time But I felt very comfortable with that and and so that's that's what my work is about Well, if if I can add a little bit from the book that I found fascinating and where two things one It reflects back to the first book where you saw a gap in the knowledge base and you felt like you needed to feel fill it and here It seems to me like you saw a gap in the service needs of in terms of how to serve people And you decided to fill it and that's not to say that there aren't many Wonderful people who are doing this work But like one of the stories you tell in the book that I think is interesting is one of your first days on the job While you're still training with the guy who's training you who doesn't have any psychic abilities He's and he's a man. So it's this isn't just an exclusively Woman kind of gender related thing. It's a guy and he's of service too But I'm bearing the lead here You notice that he's touching people and that when he touches people Your Sensibility as a psychic medium tells you that that might be Shifting them in a way between these two worlds of extended consciousness in this world That might not be What's best for them at the time and you say oh, I make a mental note to myself that maybe this is something I need to understand better So that's the beginning of this journey that you take as a doula where you're bringing all this extra debra stuff You're communicating with them telepathically You know the person sitting there and to everyone else at the hospice and they're good well meaning medical people But they're like yeah, they they don't communicate and you got well They kind of communicate with me because I'm talking to them telepathically or the family is grieving go Oh, I wish I could you know say one more thing to them and you're able to say You can You don't lay on them a big heavy trip about hey, I'm a psychic medium. Let me tell you it's just Kind of what you bring to this To this process that is quite unique Yeah, well just to be clear. I got into this work because I wanted to be of service. I just felt that it was something just I like to help people and this is something that I really felt Uh a sense of purpose about so it wasn't so much to fill in the gap in in knowledge It wasn't exactly like the first book. Um, although You know, let's let's face it. I'm a I'm a medium and and we're dealing here with people at end of life And lots of things happen at end of life in the invisible world. That's not recognized by medical science so You know, I didn't know what kind of experience I was going to have sitting bedside at hospice. I had no idea Um, I was going in there to serve just like any other death doula but um, you know, in fact, there is so much going on and the experience at end of life is so medicalized you know 150 years ago people used to die at home surrounded by their families and um Uh, you know recent more recently now, you know Death has moved into the hospice and hospital setting. Most people say that they want to die at home. Most of them do not die at home and um I think that's one of the reasons there's such a great fear of death. That's one of the things that's really I think uh rewarding about the book diary of a death doula is It is a diary and it starts at the very beginning of this service work that you do So we kind of travel with you as you are this unsure newbie who's thinks this might be a place for them to serve But then you have to experience that and then at the end, you know, you're You're quite comfortable with not only the routine of the of the hospice Organization and the the hospice facility, but with your own abilities and how you can serve. So How did you come to decide that this should be a book and what did you why? Why did you want to Put it in book form in that way? Um, that's a good question too. I you know, I'm a teacher Um, I I've spent many years teaching. I I think you mentioned that I was a professor at hopkins I also taught in the business school at george washington university and I still teach workshops and I am a teacher by heart, you know, and Books are a way to convey knowledge to people. I'm also a huge reader. I don't know if you're a big reader, but I'm a huge reader so There's a lot to learn from this experience, you know, and again, it's not I think the amount of information that's out there for people who are dealing with Surroundings passing or death that's imminent The the information is limited Every experience was different No people no two people die the same way because we're all individuals and you know The way we die is pretty much the way we live and You know, there's a unique set of circumstances That surrounds every death and you know different family and friends involved and all of that So, um, I I guess, you know, there was a takeaway from each of these experiences, right? And the Takeaway is universal. You know death is a universal process and these takeaways are universal too. So The book doesn't need to be read in order But it's worthwhile. I think to read all of the all of the lessons Um, I think people, you know My feeling is that people who are Going through something right now, perhaps losing a loved one or have a or have already lost a loved one May be tempted. You're I think you're correct They may be tempted to go to certain cases, but you know what they may come back later and go to another case and read about that so You know, I think the book can be read from front to back or in any order that that helps people Well, I pulled up a couple of just little snippets that I pulled out that I thought we might talk about from the book. These are Lessons if you will from the 25 lessons diary of a death doula the first one was Do you feel the love and what I thought was interesting about this is These people and in this case, this is I don't remember. Maybe you remember if this was telepathic communication or if it was direct communication, but This person was experiencing this movement from life To death and they were getting what we hear from the near-death experience, you know, they they are already encountering this unbelievably feeling of love of love and they're saying to you deba Do you feel it? Do you feel it? It's amazing. It's all around me. Do you feel the love? so Can you speak to that may that one a little bit? Sure, of course so While I was sitting as I was sitting bedside with the with these patients who are actively dying I saw them journeying now we were told in hospice training that That patients at end of life are hallucinating, you know, what they what they're experiencing is not real but I can tell you as a psychic and a medium who's able to see the other side that If if what they're experiencing is not real then a hundred percent of them are having the same experiences You know, so it makes you kind of scratch your head And and beyond that, you know, you're correct that they were having the same sort of experiences as near-death experiences Now the near-death experience is a little different because I feel like That experience is tailored to people who are coming back Um, it's sort of like the previews to a movie, you know, they're getting the You know a couple big highlights and then they come back. They haven't seen the movie yet but At end of life with people who are eternally dying They have some they share some of the same aspects of the journey of the near-death Experiencer people at end of life do journey And they do feel the love and I felt or I saw it in every room that I've been in People's experiences may patients experiences may vary in terms of one may be revisiting Family members who've passed who are in spirit not one may be visiting a favorite place from the past And and another may be journeying to fantastic realms in the afterlife but All of these experiences are very high vibration experiences Vibration that doesn't exist on earth And we call that love And um their experiences that can't be You know what they call in the near-death experience world. They're ineffable. You can't describe them There's no way to describe them because they don't exist here on earth but they are universal in this dying process and uh Feeling the love and feeling at peace and feeling joy. These are things that I saw and heard telepathically from Patients over and over again It's it's very common, you know, so when your loved one is lying there If you're if you have a loved one in hospice and you go to visit them And they are lying there in bed and they are non responsive and you think there isn't much going on because their physical body is Leaving them There's actually a lot more going on than you would suspect now I have to say that some medical people, you know, some of the nurses in particular will agree with that They may not come right out and say it But they spend so much time with the patients in a different way the doctors do I think many of them really truly believe that there's something more and as a matter of fact, I've often had many Many nurses and classes and workshops that i've given and they they believe I was actually just in a group a few weeks ago And one of the questions put to the group was do you believe in the afterlife and there was a nurse in the group And she said I couldn't do the work that I do if I didn't believe in it So I have up on the screen a couple other little snippets that I took out And I thought you might add something to them one is Just a blip of what it's really all about And then the second one from a different case is I had a great life, but this is magical too And what I thought was interesting about this and again from a hospice kind of situation is It seemed to me like these folks you use the term Journey I'd also see it as the really bridging these two worlds and I particularly like that that Third one because it came through a couple times. It's like hey, I'm not totally Dismissing the life that I've had it was wonderful But this is the next step and I see that now And do you want to speak to speak to that at all? Yeah, sure. So you're you're correct. Um, they are transitioning They don't leave their memories behind so much. They take them with them and they could have glorious and and wonderful lives, but they're on to you know as as they transition they are Moving towards another realm of enhanced consciousness and what they're doing is they're leaving their physical bodies behind But their consciousness is expanding and that's what provides that sense of joy and peace and love and magic Uh as a as a medium when I speak to people who've passed who are on the other side and they tell me how Wonderful they feel they never felt like this on earth It's something that's only available when you are 100 consciousness now. I have to I have to Give a disclaimer not maybe not everyone in your listening audience believes in psychics or mediums Okay, so I I understand and if I were in their seat, I may not believe any of this either so But what I tell you is true based on my experience. Okay Well that that does lead into a whole other Kind of category that I thought we might talk about so I might even bring that up now and and I don't know how quite to pin this down but For me, it's not that I don't believe in psychic Psychic mediums and I always throw that term in I could say mediums. I could say psychics. They're different Most of the audience knows that all mediums are psychic but not all psychics mediums all that kind of stuff We've talked about that a lot in this show, but to me the science Is in I mean julie bichel is a Phd in pharmacology. She knows how to run tests. She knows how to do controls She brings in she wrote a blur a very nice blurb for your book as well so she's obviously endorsed to a certain extent that this person seems legit to her but She knows how to do this kind of work and comes back and goes look by the best way we can measure it There is a reality to this The what what I run into and I think other people run into is that A lot of people that have access to These extended realms Come back and they all think they're 95 correct always. This is what spirit told me it can't be refuted it can't be you know Jeopardized in any way and it's like well, then we have a serious problem here because we have a contradiction between what you said This isn't what you said, but somebody who says well reincarnation can only happen three times reincarnation can only happen after 50 years There is no such thing as reincarnation and I just use that as one small example So I don't take that necessarily or I just interviewed A gentleman Courtney Brown who uses remote viewing and he's very accomplished world famous at remote viewing Well, he has his own Take on what he's accessed from these realms and again He's 95 sure that he's right, you know But as an analyst you know just like 80 percent of those analysts don't beat the market despite what they say, you know There isn't an 80. There isn't a 95 percent accuracy here, which really raises a couple of questions in terms of Why there is that gap Why there is a sense that when people are experiencing it when mediums are experiencing that access They feel like it's 100 percent correct And then yet when we analyze it even like you take dr. Baichel's work, you know And as carefully as she does it it never comes out quite as high as they think so that's maybe Out there a little bit on the edge, but do you have any Any thoughts on that? Yeah. Well, you know, really you're talking about a couple different things. So first of all Mediums can be 100 percent accurate You know when you're reading for someone who has lost a loved one and they want you to connect with that Love one and the love one comes in and tells them something that is absolutely 100 percent irrefutable that there's no way I You know would know because I don't know the people. I don't know their loved ones, you know So we can bring inaccurate information. It's not 100 not all the time. We're not perfect, but you know oftentimes we can't um, but I think what you're referring to is that people have experiences and I don't know every case that you're you're referring to but and so you can correct me if i'm wrong, but um, when people have out-of-body experiences or nds or or you know any or any kind of experience like that That experience is unique to them. It's filtered through their consciousness and Most of them come back with sort of like event evangelicals They have been converted They are now sort of missionaries for the light And I think that's a result of this very High vibration that they return with you know, so think of it this way We are a physical body and let's just say As an example, we're 99 physical body and 1 consciousness. Well after you've had one of these Extraordinary experiences you come back and you're not exactly constituted the same now You might be 95 physical body and five percent consciousness You're kind of top-heavy with consciousness. You've got received an infusion from the other side and with that infusion Is particular information that's been imparted to you and it seems like everybody gets their own Imprint, you know, everyone has their own information. That's it's significant to them and unique to them and they believe it and And I don't I and I often tell people I feel like they're coming back as missionaries from From the light.  So, you know, and that's That's an explanation. I'm not sure it's You know, it's a hypothesis. Let's call it that but Uh, many people Do come back from near-death experiences, you know, and I've talked to them convinced that, uh, you know, a particular I think like what you're referring to something religious or something that they saw is the absolute But I and I think it is the absolute for them For them, it's a unique experience and it's filtered through their consciousness and that's what they're they're left with Not everybody's like that, but I I think I know what you're talking about. We've had a little light change in your Background, I think it's going to rain here. Oh, okay. So it's the natural light. Okay. All right That or I am I have been known to blow out electricity. So but I don't think that's what happened Well, that's one of the that's one of the nde after effects. Yeah, that's an after effect You know, I hear what you're saying. I guess I was referring to something a little bit different I don't know if we'd fall under the category of nde after effects Which is what your first book is about but there's kind of two issues there one is that There are some Inconsistencies and the way that I see it is that as you mentioned at the beginning We're all getting a slice of the extended consciousness One in a way that's tailored for us Two in a way that's interpreted by us In three, I have to believe and I don't have any direct experience with this So I'm very open to being corrected and guided in this but that These entities beings that are communicating To us Have their own filters as well that that seem to be still in existence That's the only way I can understand That we have these differences and I think it's kind of a glass half full glass half empty thing Where you can focus on the differences and use those to fuel a disbelief in some of this stuff Or you can focus on the more important I think similarities and look at what those could mean I I think what you're referring to This this might be a discussion for another program But I think what you're referring to you know in terms of the entities That people are communicating with and those entities having their own agenda Um, if that's what you're talking about, I mean, I I'm not I'm not suggesting that I mean that's on the table too You know, I've I've talked to at this point a number of mediums and it's very you know, I think As far as I can tell well well qualified mediums, you know people who've been certified by the windbridge institute julie bashell and other mediums HD level, you know knows how to do the work There are contradictions between what they they are saying that spirit is telling them And what other folks including you are saying Don't ask me to kind of list, you know, here are the contradictions resolve these here and you know We've got to get these to the bottom of them get to the bottom of these. That's not what I'm saying what I'm saying is I I need to have a broader understanding of how that can be true And I think you're giving us some of the bones of that in that Everyone is filtering it through their experience. So if I have a download or if I have a reading I'm interpreting it according to my life experience I wonder if the same isn't true on the other side in that when we look at spirit quote unquote It it does seem to have some different aspects to it in terms of the what spirit beings were talking to and Where they're coming from too, you know, and it's not a universal thing as far as I can tell but Oh very open to any thoughts you might have on is spirit spirit or is spirit spirits so for me When I connect and I call I call my connection spirit You know some people call it the one the universal all god I call it spirit and the information that I get I always ask to be shown only that information that's for the greatest good and for the highest good And it feels clean to me and people have told me that you know that my information feels clean to them There are lots of psychics and mediums today lots And lots of healers and energy workers and I and I think what you're referring to is that there are many people who are out There who are not trained and who are bringing in all sorts of information. They don't even know what they're bringing it and I You know I see this quite a bit and some of them bring in some energies that you know Maybe they shouldn't be bringing in but what happens is if you're very open on this side, you know here on earth those entities Spirit whatever you want to call it. I think they're entities beyond spirit I think of spirit as sort of a pure universal energy, but I think there are other entities out there They're looking to make connections on earth and they're looking around to see who's open and if they can find somebody who's open they hop on board And uh, so that might explain some of this contradiction in terms of you know one person saying you know my This is this is how it is and another person saying that's how it is I mean that a whole book a book of books could be written on that subject That's that's a whole issue that probably needs to be wrestled with and there's no wrestling with it right now how do we get around that because By virtue of what you're saying You're saying your version of it is More correct more pure and I get that I'm not arguing that I'm just saying You you you have to appreciate that kind of everybody Says that so Ryan who I just had up on the screen and has been certified by Windbridge and is obviously going through a lot of training and tells Seems to be of a good heart and seems to be a good person I don't even know if she would have any like major differences with you, but I I just have encountered that over and over again If there's one universal spirit I don't understand why we're getting back Contradictory and even if it's not a major contradiction. I it's not some kind of Evil, you know do some really bad thing contradiction. It's just like minor differences Like I pointed out about reincarnation where they're kind of matter of fact about this is how reincarnation works and so let's Try and hammer that to the ground a little bit further and then we'll move on Yeah, well, I mean reincarnation is is an east, you know, that's part of eastern religion That's that's a Did you hear that what was that that's lightning and thunder. Oh my gosh, that's what I thought it was That loud. Yeah. Yeah, we brought this on we were talking about the entities so, um You know in terms of reincarnation, I mean that's a matter of religious beliefs and I think they're you know Millions of opinions on that. Um, I don't have an opinion on that people ask me about it all the time And I I don't know pine about it. That's you know, it's Not part of what I do. Um, you know, where I'm right there Why would you quote unquote? Not know about it and I don't mean that in an accusational way like you don't know about it. You're a lesser medium It's interesting to me to contemplate Are there certain things that that you would be more likely to know because You've been Guided in that way or less likely to know, you know, one of the things I was going to talk about with of marisa ryan is You know her encounters with For lack of a better term Alien intelligence is alien beings. It's not a big part of her practice. She doesn't like lead with it like Oh my gosh, come to me if you want to talk to aliens, although there's other people who do that But she just said hey, this is what I've encountered so now Other people will say other mediums will say they're all about past life and past life regression And that's just where their work has led them so without Again without like trying to Be accusational in the least just why do you think you haven't encountered something like after Reincarnation past lives and other people have and equally because I'm very interested in it Have you encountered this other worlds kind of thing of Non-human intelligence that resides on other planets that is Yeah, so I mean I I'll make a few comments and then maybe we can move on to you know, some of the other other topics but In terms of reincarnation and past life experiences That's just something that I don't choose to go into and part of it is For some of the reasons that you've already suggested. I have people come to me and say I believe you know in reincarnation, but I'm I'm going to come back as another person and then Somebody else's says, you know, I believe in reincarnation, but I'm going to come back as this or that and um really it's it's a religious belief and It's it's not that's what it is and people seem to be taking pieces of it to you know, suit their own framework or their own opinions The work that I do and when I do readings for people seems to revolve around the platform that I've laid and the platform is about Transformational experiences right near-death experiences and you know, what happens at end of life? So I you know, there's there's lots of ways that you know, there are lots of things I could do I could you know, I suppose get into Some of the things you're suggesting, but This is really where my work has led me, you know in terms of NDE's and and end of life But you are correct You know in that regard people have very strong opinions about some of the you know about afterlife and past about past life and about reincarnation And it's just something that I I don't go there. That's all I just don't go there I get that and I I'll leave it alone, but I do have to add I don't see it so much as you know strong beliefs kind of thing If you look at the research that everyone points to originally Ian Stevenson They're close to you at university of virginia And I'm sure you're familiar with all this and then Jim Tucker at university of virginia Who's followed up on that research one they got interested in In past life work because somebody gave him a big grant The guy from Xerox gave him a big grant and said hey go look at this And they started investigating it and from the religious standpoint. Yeah, they went to India and Sri Lanka where That isn't very much part of the culture very much part of the religious belief system But where they've really kind of made hey in terms of publicity and you got to accept I do I've interviewed Jim Tucker I accept that he's a honest Researcher who's just following the data The cases in the united states that he has are extraordinary. You know the kid who's two years old who Sees the model airplane in the window of a fighter pilot and says mommy mommy That was me that was my plane and then is able to tell this whole thing So I don't think Jim Tucker has some kind of Pre-existing religious belief that he's trying to support and I don't think you're suggesting that he does either He's just following the data. I get that you haven't been drawn to that so Maybe made too much of a small point, but I do have to wonder Why you know Things work out that you are drawn to the areas that you're drawn to and are shedding light on it Which is really important, but then these other areas are are kind of left out of your view I I you know, I I think it's just not supposed to be part of my work You know, there's an old saying you can do everything, but you can't do everything well So, you know, this is this is what I do and there's a validation in what I do I mean I read from many people and I give them information and you know, they validate it So I you know, I know that What I'm bringing in is is true and correct um, but You know and everybody has their area of expertise you have your area of expertise and what you do, right? You know that you you know, you could probably do other podcasts as well, but this is what you choose to do So it's you know, I think it's sort of like that Fair enough. Let's see. We've covered a lot of the topics on my little skeptical Jeopardy board Are there any other ones that you feel we might want to talk about? Well, you know, we can talk a little bit about nde after effects We can talk about the cross culture in terms of people having Near-death experiences across cultures because that does happen it affects young and old it affects People all around the world, but I just make a few comments about nde after effects. Yeah, thank you so in my book life after near-death I focused on the physiologic and cognitive after effects because I wanted to Do research on on Changes that could be validated, you know again We're getting back to that idea validation because many people come back from these experiences These transformational experiences and they say I'm more spiritual now or I'm psychic now Well, okay, there's no way for me to measure that I don't know how spiritual you were before and how spiritual you are now I can't measure it But if you have somebody who comes back and says my hearing is enhanced And they had a hearing test before their nde and the hearing test after their nde That can be measured and it can you know, it's demonstrable and it's it's Proven and that was very important to me because I wanted to you know, talk about these experiences And not have medical science say that couldn't happen because you know in fact if you have If you have the medical data, you know, then it's a different kind of discussion right on to that And again, that's just kind of a cool way that you approach it Let's talk a little bit about the integration problems because You talk about it in one way In the book and more in the first book Then in the second book diary of a death deal look because that's more about this hospice experience But people do have Challenges integrating the experience of a spiritually transformative experience whether it be in the e or a shared near death experience You know where that's more relating to your hospice work where someone's in the room and they Have this experience as their loved one passes and the the numbers are Kind of startling and can be upsetting for people much higher divorce rate People have these sts and they come back and they wound up getting divorced and they say, you know My spouse just couldn't I was a new person But I wasn't the person they married kind of thing and other problems, you know as Dr. PMH at water who you is in the bibliography one of your books She's researched this as well and has said okay Here's another problem people have as they go through this evangelical phase They come back and they're like, oh my gosh I have to tell everyone and then you even have stories of that and that doesn't always work so Great either tapping somebody on the shoulder in the line at the grocery store And telling them about your communication with right now in the present with The extended realm doesn't necessarily fit well into life So do you want to talk about integration problems and maybe as a medium How you deal with your own how how you dealt with your own integration problems and how you deal with them today Yeah, okay Great question. So You know people often say to me, how can I have one of those nds? They sound so great That's going to be that's exactly what I need and I say you don't really want one You know, this is not what it's you know cut out to be it's not what you see on TV you're in the movies. It's not all butterflies and flowers You know the the thing is and I I don't have an answer for this. Um, I have a An idea but I don't have the answer. Um, you know, it's almost like the universe is taking these people and um I feel like the universe kind of has their eye on people and you know Who could be a potential missionary for us a missionary for the light and it Just at the exact moment because you can't give yourself an nde And at the exact exquisite moment they're taken and they have their nde and then they're plopped back Into their body and they're back on earth And they say what the hell happened. What now what do I do? Well, the first thing they do is they run off and tell somebody who thinks they're you know crazy So they learn it takes a period usually a process of about seven years to learn to integrate this And um, there are so many changes, you know, they've been flipped upside down and it's really very difficult um when I read for the first person I read for who had These nde after effects and was sort of the jumping off point for my book life after near death I said to him in the reading How do you live with this and he said It's very difficult And now this person is still Has his day job. He's Kind of a well-known guy and he still has his day job But that's very unusual most people who have these experiences go and do something else, you know, they go become Massage for reiki masters or you know psychics or mediums or you know something where they could spread the light It's it's very difficult. And you know, the thing is it sounds like it's such a great idea to have this transformation and But I often think this is a universe's idea and the the issue is we live here on earth We live on earth. We were built to be material physical beings on earth And we come back with titrated In a different way. We're made up. We're constituted in a different way and we're not constituted for life on earth That's an important change because you know, we've been doing this for a while I've been doing it for a little while too. Yeah, it's really heartening and encouraging to see that there is that support because especially if you go back, you know We talk about cross culture You know a lot of cultures If this wasn't part of the existing belief system and you came back and said, hey, let me tell you about my NDE It was worse than disbelief.  It's absolutely no question. I mean, we're going through a little bit of a sweet spot right now Uh culturally, you know about all of these experiences and I think people who've written books and who come on podcasts like yours And who've talked about it people didn't talk about this 10 years ago, but they're talking about it now And I really credit Evan Alexander for that. I think I think Um, and this may sound really crazy But I think he was pretty much chosen to be this, you know to be the poster boy because who would be a better poster boy for This experience in a harvard neurosurgeon, right? You know, he appears to have that instant credibility He's a scientist and uh from harvard. I mean the pre, you know, one of the pre-eminent institutions So he kind of paved the way and I feel like People's people who've had this experience have said, well, you know, if he could talk about it I could talk about it too. Interesting about Dr. Alexander is that I think it also drew attention to The pushback the organized systematic pushback Among science because I think a lot of people couldn't square that I know I highlighted it over and over again on this show it's like Why why is he all of a sudden being debunked on the cover of espar magazine? What what raises This one person's account of a personal experience they have to that level Why is that so threatening? And then if you really take a step back and you say gee this scientific materialism that's been kind of jammed down our throat that doesn't make a ton of sense philosophically seems to be on a little bit to shaky ground given some of the scientific anomalies we see And you kind of get a different picture of how desperate Certain groups are to promote a certain dogma that Has crumbled right in front of our eyes and if another thing about dr. Alexander. He was He was a good guy to stand up to that kind of assault and deal with it And I expose it because I think people saw it and they were like Something's not right. They're calling this guy They're calling this guy into question because he doesn't have qualifications That was one of the first things and people were like saying what you said But didn't you just say he's a harvard neurosurgeon. He's a brain scientist from harvard and you're saying he doesn't have qualifications It really showed how phony Some of that skepticism was yeah, well, I mean people have Um They like to protect their institutions.  Yeah. Yeah. I mean I I get that um Yeah, I mean and in terms of esquire. I mean they're in the business of journalism, you know And it was it's a good story. It's you know to have a different a different story out there I think, you know, he's sort of like what we would have called in the investment business a headliner stock You know, you know, he's a marquee figure and you know, esquire is not going to write a story about somebody who You know, it doesn't have that kind of platform or prominence, but he did No, I could buy that more if I hadn't covered Similar stories for the five years previous on that in terms of it was more in academic circles But just in terms of these really rather silly counterarguments to nde science being published in Respected peer reviewed journals and you have these people on and you say you've totally misquoted Pen don llama for example. No, that's not what's dr. Sam Parnia said in his research I mean, this is just sloppy crap that slips through and I just this is personal opinion I don't think it can all be chalked up for someone guarding their turf I think there was something more in terms of just seeing how really threatening this One particular thing near-death experience was to this underlying paradigm of scientific materialism because it really gets to the heart of it in a way that For example parapsychology never did. I mean parapsychology was out there for the longest time And if you really understood it, you said well that Really pierces the pierces the bubble of scientific materialism But when nde science started happening even before ebb and alexander They whoever they are recognized that this is a change that we can't allow to happen That's how I saw it and reported on Yeah, well, you know, I thought it was interesting when I wrote my first book I went on amazon and I counted how many books had been published on near-death experiences and There was rayman a raymond moody's book and ebb and alexander's book and a handful of other books And then when I was writing my second book I went back to amazon and counted the number of books on nde's and there were I don't know hundreds I think 400 books and that probably doesn't even include all the self-published books, you know, but um There's just been an explosion and I think that's good But I I feel like my job is not to convince anybody my job is you know to do my work and to do good work And you know, this is how I operated in the investment business I mean, I didn't know back then that I was a psychic But I was I would come up with ideas that were always 10 years ahead of everyone else And the first couple years when I was in the business people would just scratch their head and say We don't know what she's talking about and then after a few years They'd say we still don't know what you're talking about, but what's your next idea? So because then I had a track record, you know The things that I was working on the things that I you know I said this is something we need to own and they'd say why and I'd say because it's going to be big You know, and then 10 years later. It was big.  You takes your choice. So, you know, you can believe it or not believe it I mean, I'm just I'm just like everybody else out there who's written books and who's doing research Shealy Beischel and other people who are legitimate researchers, you know, we're doing this work and and and And in the best of all circumstances, it will be it will be left as legacy for us, right, you know I have had long track record of people Not paying attention to what I do That's sort of the story. That was the story of my investment work for a number of years And then the barbell swung to the other side once once, you know, so much of what I did turned out to be Accurate and correct and all that and ahead of the time. So that was when People would come at me and I mean I was recruited by George Soros to George to join his team of managers And which I didn't do but You know, I would say to myself when these things would happen I'm still the same person I'm still the same person who did the pick and shovel work on the front end And I'm still the same person who's now been recognized for doing this work I'm still and you know, my it's my philosophy is I just keep my head down. I try to do the best work I can Nice awesome. You've been super open and generous with your time I'm going to try and pull in one more category and then we'll wrap this up today As above so below is what I titled this as and You know, one of the questions I keep returning to Because I don't think it should be as controversial as it is Because to me the data speaks to this Very clearly. I always reference dr. Jeffrey long radiation oncologist Who's compiled the largest database of near-death experiences. Yeah, and I know him he endorsed my first book I know Jeffrey and and his wife Nice great people Researchers no religious agenda the title of his second book god and the afterlife What he reports over and over again is a hierarchical structure of higher realms that suggest god That's what people report. I don't know what to make of it. I don't know what god means I'm not trying to trigger anybody But that's what seems to be reported now in a lot of the circles that I Fall in which maybe maybe over the wrong circles That always sets people off. Hey, I'm not sure that there's god. There's multiple contact modalities There's just this blob of consciousness. There's no order to it. There's no structure to it It's just is what it is kind of thing. I'm okay with that But what I read from the data From the in particular the near-death experience data, which seems to address this topic slightly differently than other data It says yes to higher realms. It says yes to structure ordered moral imperative. Good bad so Let's talk about that a little bit. I'd love to hear what you think about that Well, I think you know from my work both in the nde world and in hospice You know, I would echo what you what you just said that That you have these structured higher realms and I think when you bring up the topic, you know, there's certain topics that set people off in any You know in any group of people if you bring up politics or religion, you know You're going to get you can get some pretty dramatic responses. So I think the same is true Here, you know in this realm, which is already kind of a hot button for a lot of people my experience with Nde years and those at end of life is that many of them feel that they've experienced God or you know that and god has a different meaning to Lots of people, but you know, they'll say that they they met god Um other people You know, again, this is all filtered through individual consciousness. So whatever is important to them is what they're shown That's it's a reflection of their consciousness If they were often very religious people in life their nde or their experience at end of life Um are going to reflect that I I've sat with people at hospice who I know Had religious upbringings or led religious lives because their rooms are decorated with all sorts of Religious artifacts and there are bibles there and whatnot and when they are traveling and journeying at end of life They may see choirs of angels and they may see magnificent structures that represent some sort of Religious, you know quasi religious institution. That's what they are shown But I've also sat with atheists and they aren't shown anything like that So I think, you know, what you're referring to is reflection of each person's consciousness and Everyone has different beliefs here on earth, right? Some people believe in religion Some people believe in god some people don't believe in any of that and the experience that they have as they As their consciousness expands is a byproduct of what their belief system is So I don't think there is one universal answer to all of this I I mean, I think it's worth listening to everybody because everyone's unique and their experience is each going to be unique And it could be argued up and down and sideways and back and forth, but You're not going to find It's not binary. It's not something look The world of consciousness is not binary the life we live on earth is Much more binary than the you know, than the world of consciousness. That's a world of infinity and infinite infinite possibilities So I think trying to apply some of the logic That we would use here on earth to describe things or understand things is problematic when you're dealing with consciousness Fair enough, although you did kind of come around full circle there in a way that I think is is How can it be otherwise? Because we can't know it but Can we say There seems to be a hierarchy. There seems to be a moral imperative or should we stick with We don't know because it's too complex to understand in our puny little time space reality To try and attach those kind of words to it and then I have to ask about the jesus thing Because not because I'm not christian Uh, but I've certainly encountered Look, I've encountered near-death Experiencers that seem to have a strong desire to co-opt this entire experience to fit with their religious tradition And that just isn't supported by the data. It just isn't you know, you talk to any nde researcher. They'll say no, there is no religious Primacy to the near-death experience on the other hand there are some rather compelling cases Of near-death experiencers who have encountered a spirit being who identifies as jesus Is meaningful to them both during that experience and is transformative for their experience afterwards And is tied to this figure. They recognize as jesus So again, given everything you said, you know, maybe this is something that can't be completely resolved But any thoughts you have on that might be interesting Well in terms of near-death experiences. These are meant to be teaching lessons Okay, we're getting back to the idea of lessons again These are meant to be teaching lessons because they're coming back to earth after these experiences and they're supposed to bring This lesson with them so that they can carry forth their life in that fashion as they go on um, so, you know, what is shown them is something that's going to be Significant to them if you take somebody who's very religious and they have an nde and they don't meet god and You know, they don't have maybe even a very dramatic experience What do you think their lesson is? What do you think they're going to do when they come back? Are they going to be able to fulfill some mission? I mean, I don't think so because if the if they are meant to be missionaries for the light They have to get the message that appeals to them. That's tailor made for them So I think that's why uh, people have these nde's and each one is so unique to them And so meaningful to them, you know, they're they're shown exactly the information It's I don't know how it's done, but it's retrieved from their consciousness and reflected back to them in a you know, ultra-magnified way and In such a way that it has a major impact so that they come back transformed So I don't know how the process works. I don't know who's up there pulling the strings And you know if there's like a guy like the wizard of Oz, you know, who's got a machine But I don't know, you know, now we're getting into You know, why do these nde's happen? What's the purpose of them and I do I do believe that At least part of the purpose is to come back and be a missionary for the light and I do believe that people are Are shown what is important or significant for them so they can come back and and be transformed so That I don't know if that answers your question but that's You know based on the based on the research I've done. I think that's the best like, you know, best answer I have awesome Well, this all this work is just really really special and I hope people do check out the books life after near death Which is really great really fascinating if you're into nde science kind of stuff strongly recommend that and then for an emotional kind of hug Diary of a death doula is is amazing because you feel like you're right there Doing the hospice work that this woman is doing and you know She's not asking for a big pat on the back or anything But she's just being of service and that comes through and it's really done in a beautiful way So it's just been awesome getting to know you our guest has been debra diamond She's very easy to find on the web Debra diamond psychic and debra diamond author. I think our Yeah, debra diamonds psychic com. They can come to my website And uh, you know find out there's information on the books and find out about my background and and the events I do a lot of events. So that's also on my website I mean you do readings. You don't hype that very much But you don't have to people find you and want to connect with you Want to have a skype session with you and do a reading and you still do one on one Yeah, I do readings by skype and zoom and FaceTime and I also do in-person readings here in the us Baltimore area in the Baltimore area.  So I hear from people just probably like you do I hear from people all over the world from new zealand and australia and africa and south america Who you know relate their experiences to me and many of them have readings as well So it's it's um, it's something I didn't expect, you know, when I wrote the book I wrote it because I was interested in the topic. You know, I didn't I didn't know what the um uh You know follow-through would be but it's been it's been great. It's been really rewarding and interesting and I love hearing from the people So it's you know, it's it's the cherry on top of the uh, you know ice the sundae Awesome, great. Well terrific and best of luck with all that continue. Thank you so much. Alex. It's been a pleasure. I enjoyed it. Thank you Thanks again to Deborah diamond for joining me today on skeptico. I have one question to tee up from this interview and You know, I'm reluctant because it's really not the main focus of her terrific work Which I really want you to check out, but it's the thing that keeps bugging me and that's How does this fit into our larger understanding of? extended consciousness I was kind of surprised when we talked about reincarnation and she was like, you know, that isn't really my thing And on one hand, I accept that that's not her thing But why doesn't that come up? Why doesn't et come up and it comes up from iris aryan? I mean consciousness extended consciousness the only thing we can say from So many of the guests we've had on is that it's Incredibly vast impossible to pigeonhole or even understand comprehend from our limited time space reality But shouldn't the pieces Bit together a little bit more elegantly at times But maybe they shouldn't again her work is fantastic and important So if you do have a answer if you'd like to weigh in on this question, I'd love to hear you Give your answer from the perspective of the fantastic work that she's done because I think she deserves that in terms of what she's accomplished here Let me know your thoughts you can do that Of course in the skeptical forum or you can comment on youtube if you're watching this on youtube Or just any other way you want to find an email for me, which is really easy to do and send me an email I don't know why other people are are so hard to reach I don't know if they're just deluged with millions of emails But I don't get millions of emails and the ones that I get that are really worth responding to Are are very manageable. So if you have a thought if you have a question or comment email me love to hear from you I love connecting with people who listen to the show the show as you know is kind of a narrow niche Deep dive show. So if you're listening to it, if you've gotten this far You're my people man. You're my tribe. So let me hear from you connecting any way you feel is appropriate for you At this time and please listen to all the previous shows if you think there's any in the library that you might like They're all available for free for download to Read if you want to read the transcripts the partial transcripts I have them visit the skeptical website for that and otherwise if you stick around I have more shows coming up And I hope you'll stay with me for all of that until next time Take care and bye for now


Thank you for the Baumgartner University of Bonn. Thanks for three stimulating presentations. My question goes to Margaret. I liked your findings that growth brought even more employment in the rural areas if I got it right. And you said women in urban areas are particularly bad off. One thing that came to my mind was how did you include informality of employment in urban areas? Maybe you could elaborate on that later. Hi, can you hear me? Thank you for your question and your interest. The short answer is the DHS data don't distinguish between informality and formality. So the good news is that we have everybody. The bad news is that we can't tell the difference. My paper online, which one? The question was on the conference side. I was looking for your paper. I have some papers. I'll put something there. The DHS data, we haven't written it up yet. Matthew Powell. I think this is not very interesting research. This style of analysis only really takes you so far. Because if you have a movement from a low productivity sector to a high productivity and without a fall of the productivity in the high productivity sector, that's not really a cause of economic growth. It's a pattern of economic growth. To actually get the causation in, you have to move back and say why can you do that? I wonder if you could say something about your research programs and how they address that particular. Can I answer right away or do I have to wait? I'm just going to answer right away. 100%, 150% right, if that's possible. So there are a couple of things. In an earlier paper, a background paper for the African Economic Outlook, I included a lot of different political variables from the Oh, what's the name of that guy? The Ibrahim index. I included those variables to try to tease out whether there was any correlation between governance indicators and structural change and there was some correlation. The next step, actually, I need to be a little careful because we haven't talked about it fully with my co-authors. We have a research assistant who's just started a series of commodity prices for us, so we can look at the extent to which commodity price changes are driving. There are a couple of ways to go about it. We have an indigeneity problem, so could we instrument GDP growth with commodity prices? Or we can include commodity prices directly in the aggression to see to what extent they're changing things. We already have the political variable there. We should probably include something to do with conflict. That's one route we can go down. Then the other route to go down, I think, is more detailed country-level studies. Well, yes, like Robert's study, but even more storytelling. A separate line of research that I'm involved in, that I think is related and really interesting because it's much more micro, is for example, in Ethiopia there's been a lot of investment by the Chinese, particularly in the leather industry, and they're exporting now designer shoes. Leather designer shoes. It's interesting to understand the consequences of that, but it's also interesting to understand how that came about. A lot of it has to do with personalities at the top, so that's not very satisfying from an economist's perspective. It's fascinating questions. Maybe I can take this opportunity. I do have a quick question for Marcus, and of course I have not had a chance to read your paper, but what wasn't entirely clear to me was whether you specified postulated one production function in agriculture. Because if that is a case, it seems to me that it may well be an extreme assumption. At one time I looked at the evolution of production, of agricultural production within the case of Taiwan over 20-25 years, and it started as an essentially almost totally labor intensive technology and gradually they started moving in some agricultural implements that increased the land productivity, labor productivity, but this was a very gradual process, but clearly 20-25 years later the technology had become significantly more capital intensive. So my question to you is, am I correct in understanding that what you did was to postulate one unique production function? If so, I would have some reservations. Thanks a lot. That's a great question and it's the usual curse of dimensionality for me. So what we do in this research we say the existing literature thinks that agricultural production is identical in 1950 Ghana and 2010 Taiwan everything is the same everywhere always. Same alpha, same beta. So what do we do? We change the alpha to alpha i. We relax the assumption that every single country has the same function and we can do that. So from my perspective I would say one defense against this kind of suggestion is we can say these are movements along the production plane, let's call it. So initially capital stock was extremely low, later on it was much, much higher. This would be kind of a non-empirical defense. An empirical defense would be to say okay let's say we have long enough data we can look at the beginning and then towards the end. We can compare whether if we analyze a kind of a moving window of data whether we can see a change in this production frontier or this production technology and for one of the papers I mentioned that's exactly what we did and we found them to be comparatively stable. I know this is your area of expertise. I think these environmental impacts on what is possible in agricultural production or what is feasible is very important in this context. Thanks very much. Just two brief questions to Dr. Robert Jose on his presentation on Ghana. I'm just wondering whether you could throw a little bit more light on what you mean by indicating that the cuckoo sector has declined. Is the decline in relative or absolute terms given the fact that cuckoo production has increased quite substantially in Ghana since the early 2000s. And secondly I'm also just wondering whether your paper considered the implications of the sectoral patterns of growth for issues of inequality in Ghana. Thanks Abdul. So what I meant with respect to the cuckoo sector was the relative share, its contribution to GDP. So that has declined with respect to the fact that we've achieved the highest in the country's history with respect to the output. Now the second question I was going to clear the question was I'm just wondering whether you look at the implications or the impact of that on the patterns of inequality that we observe in Ghana now. Okay, yes indeed. There are three sources by regions where we split the country into three zones and then look at the movements with respect to resources across the three regions. So but also even with respect to the sectoral productivity changes you remember one of the points I made earlier with respect to why I thought Ghana was interesting was essentially what the implications of that part of growth is for employment. And so for instance if you do observe a reallocation of resources from say agriculture to the retail trade sector which in essence isn't a relatively high productivity sector. The question is whether that is a part that A is sustainable but B with respect to inequalities whether it does help at all with respect to inequalities. My submission is that probably it doesn't. Of course the fact that the tourism sector has become relatively more important. Reallocation of resources to the tourism sector is a positive. Generally with respect to the tourism sector because also the tourism sector has relatively high productivity. So we do look at what the implications are for inequality and employment. Thank you very much. Any other questions comment? Yes please. My name is Imran Belodia. This is a question to Robert. I was just wanting to know how you dealt with the informal sector in Ghana. Is that completely out of your story or is all of that employment sitting in the services sector? How have you handled the informal? Yes like I said we've done a disaggregation by sectors with respect to the employment movement and then you can then relate that to the productivity changes that are for care across the different sectors. And so if you look at the retail trade sector, the retail trade sector is typically at least for Ghana the sector which is highest with respect to informality. So moving of course our Greek is also traditionally classified as informal. So while Labour is actually moving from a Greek to the relatively low productivity informal sector essentially you are juggling the balls but the core of the structure of the economy in terms of how things are done generally hasn't changed. So people have stopped farming and then they are now selling the purple on the streets. Thank you. I guess we are all getting hungry but I don't want to close the session until I'm sure that we have exhausted every opportunity for you to ask questions or make comments but if I don't see any did you want to have the final question please? It's about the first paper. It would help me, I don't know maybe a couple of other people to explain a little about the correlation between the Labour shares and the climatic zones. The idea that in South Korea there was a big reason agriculture was particularly capital intensive whereas in Ghana it was labour intensive. That's the particular response. Is that the picture? And if so, what's the connection between the climates and the capital? Great question. What we mustn't confuse is the technology with the labour or capital intensity. So all that we observe we are very, very cautious about this correlation because we don't want to talk about geographical predeterminism. All that we try and show with these patterns in the data if we plug them into a very basic and stylised model of how structural change works, we notice that there's very, very significant quantitative differences in terms of whether you seem to be in a high labour coefficient environment or in a low labour coefficient environment and in a way that's trying to excuse people who say well we can't just be the next South Korea. I mean there's a lot of other political economy reasons why South Korea was incredibly successful but just taking that as the sort of gold standard, the best you could do in terms of structural change it would not be possible if Ghana for instance had the same level of technological progress, if it had the same level of population growth and the same level of increase in wages, of course these are all endogenous to a certain extent but it would still not achieve the same level of structural transformation and income after 40 years. So it's important to notice that countries are different and if I can take that as an opportunity I wanted to ask Maggie, so you're using these large micro level data sets now and I know my micro friends in the room know that you are on to the path of the Holy Grail because micro is better but here's my question so I have 900 observations in my data data set and I use regressions that are based on say 30 because I do it country by country. You have in the hundreds of thousands of observations in your data set across a very diverse set of African economies. If you are a policy advisor and I think that's ultimately what you have to be what is your recommendation based on these hundreds of thousands observations from an incredibly diverse set of countries what is your policy advice to that one single politician are we not better off to doing just case studies? Why do we bother with these cross country analysis? Well you know what I have a question for you too but I'm actually going to put you off for a minute because because I have, we have not gotten to the point at which we're talking about policy recommendations. This is work in progress I'm just describing what's going on in the data and first understanding what's happening. You need to do that before before you can make policy recommendations. Having said that in the macro regressions when I pull all the, there are a variety of things I can do. I could do it country by country no problem. I have country fixed effects and so one thing we can do is and even with the country fixed effects the socio and economic things and the GDP are important but I could go country to country and run the same regressions and see I mean I'm betting you anything I would bet my first born son and I don't have one on the fact that I would see the coefficients look similar for every country but that's easy to check. Okay so that's one thing but can I ask you a question about your paper? Please be very, I mean we are now at 20 minutes still. It will be very quick but in that slide where you had a beta you know what is beta the share of in the technology. Okay so one thing I found really confusing about that slide is you pointed out these huge differences in productivity but the differences in consumption are minimal. Yes so I lost over that. There are two consumption variables there. One is consumption of agricultural goods. The other one is consumption of non-agricultural goods so following angles you know we now we consume what 5% of our income in terms of agricultural goods and so therefore across these three different scenarios there was very very little difference because people don't consume food once they get much richer but there was a vast difference. The South Koreans they use Samsung phones and Hyundai cars. The Ghanaians unfortunately still eat most of their income so you're very right that agricultural consumption was flat across these three scenarios. Non-agricultural was very far from flat. I have to say one more thing it will only take two seconds and for the thing about policy so actually one thing that I think is important so for example in those regressions this issue of youth unemployment comes out hugely important and a big problem and it's common to all countries so that's an important fact for policy makers to know it's something that African policy makers can rally around together you see. Well I have the final word and of course I want to thank the presenters for some very interesting and challenging presentations. I've always felt that it was the resource endowment of a country that to a large extent predetermined the type of technology that would be used so I've never and Hayami was one of my students you know I'm old enough to but anyway my first job was at Iowa State University and Hayami was getting his PhD there I've talked to him a lot about it but I've never been convinced with the idea that you can have a super production function that accommodates any type of resource endowment but that's a you know you're supporting me actually. Okay good so but anyway thanks to the presenters and also thank you very much for the incisive questions and I think we've passed the deadline and we all deserve to have a nice lunch.