On this episode of Skeptico, a show about near-death experience. One of the interesting things is that when people are told, it's not your time. You have things to do, work to do. It's interesting that they're not told what it is. And a show about the clarity that can come from making tough decisions. So, what can I do for you? I want out. I'm done. I want out. When did you start feeling so sorry for yourself? It's unbearable. It's just money. It's not wrong. And it's certainly no different today than it's ever been. Stick around for my interview with near-death experience researcher, author, and hedge fund manager and trader, D.J. Kadejian. Welcome to Skeptico, where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I'm your host, Alex Cares. And today we welcome D.J. Kadejian to Skeptico to talk about his new book, The Cross Over Experience, a book he wrote with two very highly regarded, at least in my opinion, near-death experience researchers, Dr. Penn Van Lommel and Dr. Gregory Shushan, both of whom you've heard on this show and they're really terrific. First, let's give a little bit of a bio for D.J., award-winning documentary filmmaker, best-selling author, quantum economist. I think that's code-speak for hedge fund manager and trader. Can you say it that way? Instead of hedge fund that has bad connotations now? It does. It does. But it plays so beautifully into this terrific book that you've written, D.J., that I want to push it out there in front, hedge fund manager, quantum economist cracking the code of the scientific wrinkle. There's a lot to unpack there, my man. I'm just scary. I don't know how it all came together, but as much as it is, that's a little bit of me. So D.J.'s films have aired on PBS, Gaia TV, Discovery Channel Hallmark, as well as being in over 120 film festivals. He's a Cornell man and a member of the director's guild. And it's great to have you here, D.J. Thanks for joining me. Great to be here. I've enjoyed watching and listening to your podcast as well. And in fact, I stumbled on your podcast with him about a year ago. I've read a lot that's on your site. So it's very nice to be here. Well, terrific. You just mentioned Tim Van Lommel and Dr. Gregory Shushan as the other near-death experience researcher that a lot of people will know. They're featured prominently in this book. We're going to talk about the book. It's really quite unique and I think will be highly useful for a lot of people the way that you've put this together. But first, maybe talk about who these guys are. Let's introduce them a little bit because they are along for the ride on this book and prominent part of it. Well, Dr. Van Lommel was a practicing cardiologist in the Netherlands. And he kind of stumbled on the near-death experience right around the same time as Raymond Moody did. So they were kind of both in two separate parts of the world. But as often happens, these things kind of kick up at the same time. But let's tell the story because it's such a great story because it's interesting you draw the connection with Raymond Moody because they really stumble upon it in a completely different way. I mean, Raymond Moody, a lot of people don't know, but he's with Elizabeth Kubler Ross is how he stumbles on it. She's really the one who kind of discovers it. And she says, Raymond, you better come over and look at this. Penn Van Lommel stumbles on in an indirect experiential way. Tell that story. Well, he had a patient that had come out of one of his surgeries and told him essentially that he saw things that were happening in the operating room. And Penn was pretty much astonished because it was accurate. And we've heard this now. I mean, this has been recorded often. But back then it wasn't as common. And at the time, really, this is when we were first starting to see having the ability to bring people back from cardiac arrest prior to the resuscitation techniques. You really couldn't do that. And now they were starting to bring people back. So this started to happen. And he happened to experience one firsthand and he was blown away. And so he started asking around to other doctors, cardiologists, if they had had that type of experience with some of their patients. And they said, yes, we did. But they had all written it off or scampi. So he kept asking around and starting to put the pieces of the puzzle together and see that there was great consistency in what people were saying. But most weren't taking it seriously. But he had started going around and kicking the tires. And that's when he really started to say, you know, something is definitely going on here. And that's really when he started to dive into the work. And ultimately leading to what I think is probably why would consider it the most important study research study done on the subject of perspective study was published in the Lancet Journal. Really, really thorough and just really well researched and articulated. And his book consciousness beyond life was when I really got into this for the second time because I initially kind of came on to the subject of the near-death experience, you know, well over 20 years ago when I was kind of going through, you know, a spiritual quest that took me into, you know, death and dying and these sorts of things that depend on the book of the dead. And somehow I stumbled on Raymond Moody's book and not to disparage Raymond Moody's book, which is mind blowing. But I really, I connected more with Dr. Van Lommel's book because he laid it out when he brought in really his interpretation of quantum mechanics, which helped tie everything together, you know, the testimonials that he had gathered individually, his research study, and then kind of tying the pieces together with quantum mechanics. It was like, you know, it just, you could really see kind of these patterns. For me, they just started to distill. And so, you know, my background in quantum mechanics and hedge fund management is to really look at and crunch, you know, massive amounts of data and looking for patterns and rhythms and waves. And really that's how the markets work. I mean, ultimately it's actually very interesting. And in a way, it's much simpler than it's discussed or often plans on CNBC. And it's all really a reflection of human emotion and waves and patterns and energy. And so you start to see these things come together and Pim Van Lommel was seeing them on the ground in real time, you know, these out of body experience. And I think the way he really covers non-local consciousness, that's really, you know, extremely, it just makes a lot of sense. There's so much data that backs this up. And I went through thousands of testimonials and the patterns are incredibly consistent. So anyway, that's where I kind of really fell in love with, you know, Pim's work and also really listening to his lectures, the one, the podcast that you did with him. And he's done obviously a lot of interviews you'll find on YouTube. And they weren't, these things weren't around when I was, they were happening when I first started looking at the near-death experience. So I really didn't have access to them other than a few books. So when you start to watch these, I watch probably as much of these types of, you know, his types of interviews from the research quantum standpoint, as I did the actual testimonials, which also blew me away. But so anyway, that's Pim's work, which really influenced me a lot. So it was just incredible, really great to have him as part of the book. That meant a lot. I'll pause there for a second because, you know, I don't know how much you want to go into this, but you do touch on it a couple of times in the book. So I think it's fair to bring it up. I mean, part of your personal journey is kind of death and dying in kind of a tragic way and, you know, personal way. And that plays into that. So how is that part of your spiritual journey that you do allude to in the book?   So, you know, I had a lot of fear of death when I was, I didn't know that growing up, but as I became older, you know, serious PTSD and, and, you know, I sense this real fear. And I think that's why I was drawn to, you know, initially Joseph Campbell. I stumbled on his interview with Bill Moyers on PBS. I don't know how I found it, but really I started listening to that and it was like my mind exploded. And that for me started the whole kind of spiritual quest.  He was, he was a contemporary friend with Carl Jung and, you know, his whole world. And then I got stumbled on Houston Smith's interview with, he also did a series with Bill Moyers called Wisdom of Faith. And he spent something like five years in each of the world's major religions and that really blew me away. And I kind of pulled everything together. And once that happened, I had my own investment firm. And once that happened, I said, you know, I don't know that I can do this really anymore full time for sure. So it was around that time. First I said, you know what, I'm going to try and go to Divinity School kind of on the side. And so I started going to Yale Divinity School, which is not that far from where I was living. And, and it was, it was not a good time. It was not the kind of environment I was looking for. It was not very spiritual, which is, you know, I thought it would be, you know, very intellectually stimulating, but also spiritually. And it wasn't that at all. And I remember I had my, I had a report due and I hadn't, I'm not good in school. I was never a good student. But I remember being down in Miami and I'm like, oh my God, I have to do a book report. And I was so freaked out by that concept that I immediately dropped out. That was it. So that was my religious career. I was told my hat and my wife, I was in it for the hat. You know, I wanted the hat and the scepter or whatever the pope carries. But of course it was, it was not a Catholic school. So that was never going to happen anyway. So that was that. But so that kind of drove me, you know, of course, and I, I found, I became very interested in Buddhism or noble truths.  And just, you know, it really resonated with me in a, in a way because that had always been floating the concept, but for me it was much more literal death, not knowing that, you know, it's all spiritual and it's, it's all kind of this in a sense, all the same. We just maybe experience it a little differently if depending on where we are on our journey or, you know, how open we are to these kinds of things. And, and that was around that time that I also stumbled on the work of Raymond Moody. I'm not sure how that got mixed up in all of it. I found it fascinating, but at the time there wasn't a lot of research where I could, you know, to me it was like, wow, this is really amazing. But, and it sounds too good to be true in a way. And so I'm a skeptic, skeptical. And so I'm, you know, I said, fine, but I need to see, you know, more research. And it just didn't exist in a way that I could find it. And there was, there was no real YouTube at that point. This is like 25 years ago. So I moved off and on from that and started getting into film work where I just said, you know what, instead of going to divinity school and reading books, I'm not really interested in. And I said, I'm going to start interviewing people that I'm, I've read their books and I'm very interested in. I want to go to the source and ask them questions. You know, so something like this where it's interactive. And, you know, you just, I learned much more that way, having conversations and building things like building a film, building program. It's having something at the end of the day that forces you to form an opinion. And so I started interviewing. Well, Houston Smith was in my first film, which was, which was a real treat. And anyway, a number of, of these people.  That led me into the whole psychedelic kind of movement. And so I kind of traveled a whole lot of, you know, maybe on the fringe crossing over all different types of, you know, realms and realities. And, and along the way, I just kind of started, I became, I articulated them, I guess, in some of the film work I did where my films are very experiential, where I add a lot of music and imagery to what I'm doing. I have a very nonlinear way of thinking, massive dyslexia. And, and I think one of the reasons I had success in finances, especially trade creating programs, it's very nonlinear. And that's how my brain works. Like, like I was late on getting on this call. I can't remember what zip code I'm in.  But I do have some ability to do kind of out of the box things just because my brain is somewhat shattered, maybe in a good way. DJ, again, and you don't have to answer this, but, and you and your wife lost your son. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that was almost two years ago, a year and a half ago. And I think, you know, like, I'd like to know how that, well, I'd like to know to the extent that you feel it's relevant or interesting to, to play into this, because this is this larger stream of consciousness that we're all tapping into in different ways. And like one of my friends of the show and friend, Mark Ireland, lost a son and that's what kind of propelled him into looking into the near-death experience stuff. But then he found in his background that he had kind of been primed for it in a way in some major ways in terms of his father was like super psychic, his uncle was super psychic and all the rest of us. And they were immediately connecting with the other side. And so I think it's kind of interesting in a way that you were primed, you know, you were primed for, you know, and then all the things we have to deal with that in terms of, I mean, that's so personal, you know, that's so personal. But at the same time, it is the essence of this thing that we're talking about with the near-death experience and the scientific wrinkle and the look behind the curtain and all this other stuff that we might think about in a much, much deeper way than most people are talking about. So I don't want you to share any more than we need to or you need to. And if you want, we can take all that out. But, you know, how does this all fit together in terms of when you look at life and death and the people who are closest to us and the people, you know, your kids, I got four kids.  But you have a piece of my heart. You got it.  You own it. I don't want to have it, you know. So I don't know. Yeah, it was, it was, it's been interesting. My son passed about two years ago. It was when COVID hit. He came to the area, Sarasota. I live on Longboat Key, which is right off Sarasota. And he had been struggling with addiction for, boy, about 10 years. And he'd been going back and, you know, back and forth going down to like Peru and he was getting, you know, treatments for, you know, using which, which now we're seeing this happen all around, all around the world now where they're using psychedelics in therapy. It's becoming more prevalent, whether it's suicide and well, MDMA, which is not really psychedelic, but Ibugaine, which, which he, he, he did once. That's pretty brutal stuff. And that had major impact on him. It really helped him for a long time. So he was down there. He studied to become a shaman for a while. Really interesting kid.  So he got here. He didn't really know anybody. And then COVID hit and, you know, he couldn't get work. He isolated a little bit too much. And, and it just, it just happened.  So I had a sense always that it was going to happen. There were two times where he probably should have. Well, he should have passed. And, and twice he had, you know, somebody saw and they got a Narcan kit there and brought him back. So he's been, he's been on both sides a few times. But so, yeah, that happened. And it just blew my mind. I mean, it just blew me out of the water. And there was so much going on at the same time between, you know, COVID and, you know, my world of, you know, the way I trade and trying to hold everything together at once.   And I was, you know, pretty much bedridden for a long time and despondent. And one day my wife came up to me and she gave me this workbook. And, you know, I was, my whole philosophy was if I woke up, I would take, I forget, I'm a pretty healthy person, but I would take Zequal and it would like knock me out. And if I woke up just to distract my brain, I would watch Liverpool soccer.  So I watched the same three games for like three or four months. And it was, I knew every shot. The good thing is they always won in these games and my teams on the New York sports family always lose. So in that sense, it was fantastic. So a little sidetrack there, but...  In a very strange way. And I think you and I link up in some interesting ways in terms of the perspective we bring to this. And it will come back into play, folks. I guarantee you. But we won't go down that too much further. Let's switch back and talk about your other contributing author to this, Dr. Gregory Shushan. Give us a little bit of a background on who he is. Sure. Gregory is... He is an academic PhD and his background really is some of his lectures and the interview he did with him, I mean, kind of must read stuff. It can get pretty heady. His books are pretty difficult to read sometimes when he speaks and the way he wrote in this book, it's a little more hands-on. But he looks at the near-death experience over time through a different culture and the similarities, how they're interpreted differently, but in a sense they're all the same based on where a person comes from, the stories they were told, the myths that they learned, whether it was, you know, Parsifal or Star Wars kinds of things and how ultimately they're so similar. And let me just interject, DJ, because your book does a great job of that. Again, the book is the crossover experience. You want to check it out. Like it's worth the price. And if you have Kindle Unlimited, the price is zero. But even if you don't, it's a very, very affordable book just to read the thought process of Dr. Gregory Shushant. And as you said, academic researcher, we already know that if you want to, if you observe a phenomenon like near-death experience and you have any sort of broader mind and it goes towards anthropology and sociology, one of the things you want to do is start looking at a cross-culture, cross-time, because then a lot of things fall away and you go, oh, that's just something that we cooked up in our culture. When you start seeing in a cross-time, cross-culture, then you go, aha, there's something more to this. His aha goes one step further, which you were just alluding to. He definitely trace how these different cultures with different religious traditions shifted after the near-death experience entered into their culture. So, you know, you're this Polynesian village and you got your gods and you got this and suddenly Bobo over there has a near-death experience and he comes back and now your religious traditions about death and dying, they change. And the only thing that as an anthropologist, sociologist, the only thing you could say is something about that guy's experience was so compelling that it changed. And then when you find that over and over and over again around the world across hundreds of different years, he just does the solid scientific work and say, well, we can only conclude that these near-death experiences were extremely profound in forming their beliefs about the afterlife. And I think that's phenomenal and I would also maybe tie it back to this book that you've written and compiled because one of the things I really think is great about the book and it ties back to the skeptic part that you're saying and also the hate to say it, the hedge fund trader part because you mentioned a minute ago that you're a skeptic and like I'm a skeptic, but like I'm not really a skeptic.   So when this guy comes back and says, hey, Penn, what's going on? Why are you making that joke? And he goes, what do you mean? You're dead. I know what dead means. Your heart had stopped.  It was two minutes after. They were flat lined. We were monitoring everything. Oh, no, I was there. The skeptic in the bad sense that we're used to is all his colleagues who he talks to and go, no, don't process that in that way. That ain't going to be good for everything that I want. The person who is ready, either because of 10 past lives or just because they're open minded or whatever says, no, this is something I need to look into.  You can't write a trading program that beats the market. The market, it's a random walk that doesn't work. What would you tell somebody who had that belief about the market and about trading programs and about hedge fund craziness?  Let me interject because it was a lead up. I'd say, look at my freaking house, pal. Look at my bank account. It kind of tells a different story, but if that's what you want to believe, hey, I wish you the best of luck. Yeah, it's interesting. And I think that was so helpful for me when I really started really going into the near death experience was having the experience I had in the markets because it's not random, even though people think it is. They see volatility and it looks random. But if you look at a chart, you know, a graph of what the markets have done, it's fascinating patterns that you'll see within a day, within an hour, but within a day, you'll see a similar pattern over a period of a week and over a month and over 10 years and over 100 years. These are very consistent patterns. You can't always capitalize on them because they are somewhat random and people try to trade the patterns that are obvious. But then if you dig a little bit deeper, then there are things that start to happen that are not as random. They're harder to find. But ultimately, they're going to be there because all of these charts and lines and what have you that start to form these patterns. Visually, I can show somebody this and they'll say, wow, it's really there. It doesn't go away. More than visually, correct me if I'm wrong, but I read this in your thing. Not only can you show it to them visually, but you can show them statistically. You can say there is a correlation here. Here it is. Yeah.  And so if I'm going to talk to somebody and perhaps, you know, manage funds for them, you know, here's my account. I show my literal account and I'm not taking new assets. So I'm not trying to brag, but I've been doing over 40% a year in my most recent program over the last since 2011. And I trade, I'm a true hedge fund. Most hedge funds don't hedge positions. They're long. They're all along the same thing. These hedge funds are so large right now. But I trade more commodities than stocks. And so a barrel of oil, a bar of gold and a bond, treasury bond. And these things are, are much more pure, you know, a barrel of oil has been a barrel of oil a hundred years.  Same with gold. It just is what it is. And so they have even more pure motion than stocks. Stocks have so many things going on under the surface. And so much misdirection, whether it's by the CEO or the analysts or the sell side, that's, you know, floating a new IPO for them. When you start to get into something like, like gold, for example, and oil, the patterns, you can start to see other types of more consistent patterns, not over the short term, but, but it's all emotion. It's all human emotion. I mean, the price over 20 years might go up, but all the stuff that's going on to get you there, these patterns, you don't go straight. Those patterns are all based on emotion. So it's, it's fascinating and that can be applied. I found that so applicable to what I started to see in the near-death experience when I started crunching those numbers. And that really blew me away. That blew me away because it's clear when you go through them. And if you have an eye for looking at those types of things, and I'm not talking about crunching statistics in the way that like, in my opinion, the guys like, you know, Peter Fenwick early on, Raymond Moody, you know, they, they did the numbers. And one of the things I say in the book, which people could take offense to, is that everything we've learned about the near-death experience, we really learned it, you know, 40 years ago, you know, the major themes within a near-death experience, you know, the out-of-body experience, the tunnel and going into the light, the life review, et cetera. Nothing has changed in those stories over the last 40 plus years. And we're getting so many of them obviously since the 60s with ever since we saw resuscitation techniques. Because now you're talking about thousands of people that have had these near-death experiences. Which in and of itself though, I mean, there's, there's so much to deconstruct there that I don't want to go too far down that, because that raises the whole question of the scientific wrinkle thing. You know, like, is science somehow driving this? You know, is God driving this? What are the patterns and all the rest of it? What, what we're really highlighting, and I think you did an awesome job of explaining, is you are bringing a different perspective to this. It comes through in the book. Let me dip into this, into the book a little bit and talk about it so that people get, I keep saying it's different, it's unique, and it's very cool. What you've done here is you've, again, is this hedge fund trader who's looking for patterns. You look through thousands of near-death experiences and you hold out these patterns and some of them will be very familiar to us, you know, out-of-body experience, tunnel, into the light, hellish. I love that you have hellish in there because that's something that people immediately are drawn to and we'll talk about that. Life review, all these things. And then for each one of those, what people can do is they can go in there and you've called out little snippets of these experiences because when it comes to near-death experiences, we all want to hear the stories. And you do that. You provide kind of some of the most meaningful parts of these different stories. But then what you do is two really cool things. You summarize for us some of the most, I guess, bullet points of that, you know, the life review, what you'll hear consistently. You give us some statistics with even some nice graphics that says, this is what you'll find there. And then you have this wonderful commentary where you, Dr. Penvan Lamel and Dr. Gregory Shushan are each offering their perspective. And it turns out to be quite a unique, in a lot of cases, perspective about the tunnel, about the life review, about all these things. So this is something I think people, you know, even people who are familiar or think they're familiar with the near-death experience, they'll really find a fresh kind of way of pulling this apart and looking at it. So you're really to be credited with this unique approach that you've taken. What are people saying? Are people getting this? Are they responding to this kind of thing? You know, what's interesting is the people that have read it that I've spoken to or the reviews that I've read, they're looking at it. Well, so many of them have never, have not read anything about the near-death experience. So it's kind of their introduction into it. And they like the format. It is different. You know, I'm just starting to hear, I'm trying to, you know, I'm interested in the contrast because I did want to create something, I wanted to create something that I would want it to read. That's what I always do with a film. So, and it doesn't always, isn't always the best seller because I picked topics that are sometimes, you know, difficult, especially I've done them on capitalism, greed, racism, things like that. And I do them in a style that's, I don't want to say in your face, but is somewhat provocative. And I feel like, I feel like that the, with a certain NDE crowd may not like it because some of the things that I on earth in what I was looking at are hard to explain and haven't been expressed before and aren't very comforting in a way. Although I think there's more to it. There's something behind it. But I was very surprised after reading so many of these that there are just, you know, a few things where it's like, wow, how come I've never heard that? Because they're big things. And one example would be how I never heard of any of, and I, in this book, I was very careful because I've read a lot of books where they say that the person was dead, but I really stayed with people that were clinically dead and that it happened either in a hospital setting or if it were outside of a hospital, it was somebody that either had medical experience or it was an EMT. So I really only wanted that because that's where, you know, I'm not discounting any other kind of near-death experience. But as a massive skeptic, I really wanted to stick with, I really wanted to skew the odds in my favor in the sense that this is very hard to, you know, to knock down, you know, the kind of research and statistics I was able to come out with, which is as an interesting example, in reading so many of these, I never heard of anyone say they saw their wife on the other side. They saw relatives. And now a lot of these people obviously are older, so they've had a spouse pre-deceased them. And so how is that possible? I'm not talking, I saw one or two, or I saw, you know, 3% had them. I'm talking going through thousands of these and I never saw one. How is that possible? I didn't see anybody that had pets. And I've heard of them, but I went through thousands of these and I never saw them. I think that there's something, you know, more obviously. A lot of these people spoke of kind of traveling in the spiritual pack that they go through these lifetimes with. So obviously if we're, you know, living with, if we're married to, if we're that connected, we have a spouse, that's, you know, and we're part of this group. That's still going to happen because in a lot of cases they say, if you go beyond this point, you can't come back. Well, obviously they never went beyond that. They wouldn't have come back, but my guess is that that's in the beyond. You can't convince me otherwise, but the fact of the matter is no one even broaches that subject and it's there. Now, I think it's all, I think the explanation is beyond, you know, if you, if you go beyond that, it's on the other side of that bridge, which people offer an into, but how can we haven't discussed that? That's interesting to me. And that's, these are the little things that I really love going through because I look at the little things help you to flesh out something I believe is more, you know, it's more organic, earthy, total rich, confusing, confounding, interesting, mind blowing, you know, that's the kind of stuff I like to see. Totally. And I think that, you know, there's a couple of points too. And I can go all skeptical on you here in a minute as well.  And when you master that to some degree, there is a great feeling of control about that. And I think it comes through to me in that you can be matter of fact in a way that a lot of people just can't handle. You're like, no, I did my work, I'm making a trade. You know, that's the guy, because that's the guy. Like, I'm sure you could tell a million stories and it's off topic, but you know, guys who can't pull the trigger, they do all the analysis and then they're like, yeah, but... And by the way, that's why, because I couldn't. I'm too emotional. And so I knew that the, and I, what happened is, and this is another story, I was saying, I was going to tell you, which I can explain when my son died, she put a book in front of me, my wife, and that opened me back up to the NDE and that's just where it started blowing my mind. Well, when I was younger, and I was already in the business, but I was, you know, taking research from the analysts and so forth, my wife put in front of me a book called The Market Wizards, and it was interviews with top traders in the world. And these guys, when you read it, all were insanely disciplined and they could pull the trigger. And I knew I couldn't, but I could do the research and I could create a program that forced me to pull the trigger. So that remove, even though I'll sit there like with white knuckles, please don't do this trade now, but it's when it's so painful that that's the time to do it. And so I have taken that out of the equation. And so that, which is what I also try to bring to the near-death experience because you could get so excited about the whole thing blows your mind and then it's like, yeah, but like, all right, let's just look at these little gems here that I'm interested in that stuff. That's really cool. Well, and the way that plays out, and if we have time, we'll talk about it is, so you bring a great perspective to the near-death experience as you talk about it at the end of the book in terms of how this stuff has changed you and it includes some great stories. And I'm going to read a couple clips, a couple of those stories because they also link back to this thing of kind of in your face, hard reality, but this is just the truth. I got to tell it kind of thing. Some of these stories aren't going to be super comforting to people, but they are the stories as they exist. You talk about how a near-death experience can change you even if you haven't had a near-death experience because you haven't had a near-death experience. Interestingly enough, neither has your other two co-authors, Dr. Penn Von Lommel or Dr. Gregory Shushan. Neither one has had a near-death experience. All have been deeply affected by the experience. That's fantastic. That's like in some ways, that's more important because most of us have not had a near-death experience but we can gain so much but we have to be careful. We have to be careful how we do it and I think you're providing us some ways to do it. And I would suggest also that you are making the trade. You are making the trade. You're just, the program is guiding you. And the reason I relate that back is like Dr. Gregory Shushan, I love Gregory Shushan. I think his work is great but he's this like strident agnostic. It reminds me of that South Park episode if anyone's ever seen it. The agnostic, it's this militant agnostic foster dad and Kenny somehow winds up and he goes over to the refrigerator and he goes, this is the refrigerator. You only drink agnostic soda. That means Dr. Pepper or diet Dr. Pepper. We do not know the flavor of Dr. Pepper. Is it a root beer? Is it a cola? No one knows. It can't be known. It's hilarious how much he's into it. And so Gregory Shushan to me goes through this tortured explanation of why he has to remain agnostic about near-death experience. And you want to go, Gregory, first of all when it comes to the fundamental questions in life, no one is agnostic because your life is not agnostic. You get up every day and you live your life. You've already made the decision, someone just has to look at your life and go, oh, that's what you choose. You choose to understand that there is more to life. Or you look at someone else, you go, now you're definitely choosing that there is nothing more to life. There is no agnosticism when it comes to some of these big questions. What's that saying? There are no something in foxholes. I forget that saying. Right. There's no atheists in fox. But the other thing is, and here's my take on things like that, is Gregory's put so much work into this topic. I mean, the research is mind-blowing. Look at one of his books and it would take you weeks to read through the bibliography. And it's incredible. And part of that tips the hand for him in that, you know, he's done a number of these books now. You could not put that kind of time into a book unless you were passionate about it. And, you know, you can't get up in the morning every day and do that kind of work that hard.   It's a lot of work and it's a lot of work to do, and you know, any book, but he's done how many in the lectures he's given. So he's at some level, man, you can't tell me, you know, and he's too nice and calm and mellow too and happy. And you're right.   You'll never convince him otherwise.  It's changed. It's just totally changed because, you know, I saw it happen with my trading programs. There's much more going on. It's energy. It's emotion. It's that.  And all of a sudden now they have this, this thing. Well, this wasn't, you know, in most cases, I'm sure this is not the medicine man that had it. It's somebody random.  You can see it in their face. You can hear it and the inflection in their voice.  I'm in, you know, I believe it. And then boom. But tricky, GJ, because that's, that's partially where you're coming from. That's not all the way where you're coming from because you're still looking through the data. You're still combing through the data.  You know, my ethos motto on skeptico is inquiry to perpetuate doubt. You know, whenever we settle on something, then the true spirituality is in the doubt in the quest. So I'm going to give you a little hack here that kind of contradicts what you said earlier, but I've shared on the show before, but I did it right real time while you did that. If you go to NDRF.org, which is where? Yeah, Jeffrey Long and his wife. So just do the Google search. Yeah. Do the Google search NDRF.org wife, husband, and you'll find a bunch of near-death experiences where they go, my wife was there. My wife pulled me over here. My wife did this. My first wife, some will say my first wife and this and that. So I do think that is out there. You might be onto something in terms of how prominent it is and we can do that, go down that whole path. But if I can, I want to kind of swing back because I love the stories in the book, the snippets. And I want to share a couple, especially this one because it highlights this point, again, back to this soulful hedge fund trader. Everyone thinks hedge fund traders are soulless. We have a soulful hedge fund trader. And I was mentioning that near the end of the book, they have a chapter, great chapter, how this has changed me. And here's one of the stories from one of the contributors, someone who's had a near-death experience. I lost connection with all my friends. I was unable to do the social interactions that I used to do. Communication dropped off completely. I was in my own little world trying to put the pieces of the puzzle back together. I resigned from my career as in financial technology. I dropped all communication with my coworkers. I read books all day long. I learned about crystals and how to create pyramids. Today I'm an artist. My relationship with my wife is on thin ice. That part has been sad. I hope it works out. She sees a totally different person. She's right. Let me read one more, even more kind of startling in a way. During my first year, I tried to forget what I had seen. Sometimes I tried to drink it away, but that just seemed to make it worse and more vivid. I stopped drinking or taking anything stronger than aspirin, and then I started to feel peace again with my memory of it. I didn't pull it in there, but in that one she goes, I immediately divorced my husband. I saw a lot of that. This relates to a couple of points. One is the integration problem that we are sometimes uncomfortable talking about when we really get into, and that's what this book is fearless about, is like saying, hey, we don't know exactly what this means, but I'm going to put it all on the table from a bunch of different perspectives, medical, anthropological, and just kind of hard ass, analyze this quantum economist kind of way. I'm going to look at it all these ways, but it still isn't exactly going to make sense.  You can lose all your friends. You can lose your relationship with your spouse.  You'll say that. A lot of us would pull up and go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Tell me why I would want to do that. So talk about your decision to kind of just lay it on the line, and I don't want to skew things, because the book for the most part, you know, 90% is extremely, extremely positive and uplifting, because near-death experience is about our ultimate connection with the light, with love, with God, about making life more meaningful. But also, let's talk about this part, because you're willing to go there in terms of, it's not perfect, and we don't really understand what it means, and it still presents a huge challenge, which I think you shared so beautifully at the beginning. This doesn't mean that your life is solved, that all your problems, what you perceive as your problems, are over. Talk about some of that stuff, DJ. Well, I think one of the interesting things is that, when people are told, you are, it's not your time, you know, you have things to do, work to do. It's interesting that they don't, that they're not told what it is, and a lot of people come back and they're confused. They know that they have a purpose, they're incredibly fired up, but they don't know what that purpose is, and I think that's important, because it's in that struggle to figure it out, that it's, whatever it is, it's very, very important. There's a reason you came back, but what is it?  They may not tell them for 10, 20 years, they have some that don't even tell their spouse, their friends.  So, you know, they kind of roll their eyes with most things that I do. So I can get away with some of this stuff, but a lot of people, you know, they're, they're extremely uncomfortable.  So that's, I'm not sure if I'm answering your question, but in terms of, you know, what I was trying to do for the, for the reader is what I've always tried to do for myself because I try to build things that I'm inspired by that challenged me. So, so in this book, just like in the films I've been doing for 20 years now, it's all about challenging, provoking and inspiring. So kind of the three where you say, Hey, you know, what is this and then provoke like, well, it's not maybe what you think the, the point isn't like Joseph Campbell says, it's not in learning the answers to the questions. It's in learning how to ask the right questions. And so this whole thing is, look, this is my interpretation, but my interpretation. Okay, I'm in with the tunnel tunnel makes sense to me. They don't, you know, different people describe it differently. Nobody touches things. Most of the time, these are like the things that I find fascinating, the little, little details, but in Japan, you're going to see more of a cave. The American Indian, it was more of a river in a canoe. So there, there, you know, it's a, is it, and that's the thing, how much of what we're seeing is metaphor, but you know, a lot of people hear that word and it's a little bit charged. And they say, well, metaphor, it's not real. It's mythic. It's whatever it is, it's misinterpreted. I mean, a metaphor is much, much, it's much more true than the truths that we understand. It can talk to people at different levels and it can express the same thing to people of different cultures. And so the thing is, I'm in no position to tell somebody what this means. I think there's a theme that doesn't change in these, but you know, just like the great teachers, I mean, with the Buddha or with Jesus, for example, they speak in metaphor so that whoever was in front of them, whether it was the fishermen or the, you know, the Pharisees, they're going to hear something very, very different. But once they get connected, it becomes a reality that they'll never shake. And so at some point they're going to experience each other's reality because that's just the nature of it. And whether it's in this lifetime or the next. Quick pause there. You covered so many points there that really need to be pulled apart. What I want to do here is let's pause for a minute. I want to play an extended clip from this YouTube video that you have up. It's been very successful where we'll receive hundreds of thousands of views and it's really, really well done. And I think it'll bring us back to those points that you just raised. What if the question of the existence of life after life could now be answered with certainty? What if we now know what it looks like? What it feels like? A closer look into what is known as the near-death experience is now giving us just this opportunity. Advances in medicine, particularly more effective resuscitation techniques introduced in the 1960s, has enabled doctors, nurses and EMTs to bring millions of clinically dead people back to life. Something that was not possible before this time. In a state of clinical death, most frequently brought on by cardiac arrest, the respiratory center near the brainstem stops functioning, evidenced by the cessation of breathing.  There is a complete loss of electrical activity in the cerebral cortex, which results in a flat EEG. All brain functioning ceases and it becomes impossible to be conscious or to form memories. And yet, it is in just this state of clinical death when people are reporting having the most profound experiences of their lives. With survivors reporting these experiences in such high numbers and with such clarity and consistency, they are opening a window into another realm of existence we can no longer ignore. Okay, I'll stop it right there. I want to break up some points. People are going to love or hate that video. What I love about it, and that's why I've been kind of pounding on this theme, is I love when you say certainty. And I would maybe say it back to the hedge fund. It's a tradable event, you know? It's like, gotta make that trade. That's a slam dunk. Because so much of this... Well, so many of the interviews that I do, and I love and respect, you know, so many people who have different perspectives. I just interviewed Dr. Dean Raiden. Well, I love Dean Raiden, you know? He's the one who's falsified the crazy, soulless, neurobiological robot consciousness isn't real kind of thing. But he doesn't get it. He can't cross the Rubicon. He can't say, well, yeah, it's obvious now, just like you're doing, and just say, well, look, this is what we know. And we know that when the heart stops, the brain goes flat line. But wait a minute. Wait a minute. Did you see the Michigan study with the rats where there was this burst? And you go, yeah, I saw it still. I'm trading on this thing over here because we got 60 years of EEG data with rats that have died and people that have died and dogs that have died. And we know there's no EEG activity, you know, when this and this happens physiologically. But wait a minute. What do you, what do you mean? What about my, the new study that just came out? Did you see that with the Gamboy? And it's like, bro, what are you trying to do? You're just trying to develop something to support your existing belief system. I get that. That's fine. Remember Walmart called. They want you back for the night shift. By the way, you can see me. I'll be out on Longboat Key, you know, drinking a martini, you know, it's like, it's a worldview kind of thing. They just won't allow people to do that. I appreciate that. And I may be being a little bit too flippant, but you lay down in very concrete terms what this is about in terms of, we kind of had an inkling that this was real because it's been repeated over and over to us by all these different wisdom traditions. And now we have, I love how you put the scientific wrinkle thing. You know, it's, it's a wrinkle. I don't know exactly why it's coming through back to your metaphor thing. I don't know if I, I don't know if it's metaphor. I don't know if these experiences are being relayed back to us metaphorically. I don't know, but I know that the patterns that you're seeing are undeniable. The data just speaks clearly of them and we have to process them. However, we process them into our world and decide whether to get up in the morning and live as if the data says make the trade and there is more or to decide not to. The trade metaphor, I was going to say, if, if I had the kind of data that I, I spent, oh my gosh, I don't know, six months, seven months going through these things. If I had that kind of data, I, and I could create a trading program that would be infallible. Like the data was, is that strong? And so yeah, you have that confidence of, you know, this is what it is, you know, statistical significance. You run these kinds of numbers.  I mean, you know, when you get that kind of data, that's strong, you know, it's now much, much more on the person who doesn't believe it to come up with something. And I don't like to spend so much time on the people that knock it down because I wouldn't give them air, so much airtime just because they haven't done their research. They essentially say, hey, you know, this, this isn't true, but it's like, but they haven't done their own perspective or retrospective studies. They haven't, they don't, they don't have, they don't have, I don't want to say they don't have a leg to stand on, but it's somewhat intellectually lazy, what they've done. And very simple thing.  And I mean skeptics in a negative way where they're not open minded skeptics. They haven't had an NDE. So I mean, maybe there are those that exist, but I haven't heard one that has had a verified, you know, clinical deaths that it's verified. The other, you know, simple things like the DMT example that they speak of, I went to Peru a couple of few years ago and I spent some time with the shaman there and, you know, went through seven ayahuasca ceremonies, which is all about DMT. And I took it at all different types of doses. And I can tell you with great certainty that at whatever level you want to talk about is nothing. I mean, you can say there are bits and pieces, just like you can say dreams can be interpreted in certain bits and pieces, but this is not DMT. And as far as dreams go, it's very interesting because Carl Jung had a very profound near-death experience. And in his autobiography he says, you know, these, the near-death experience is not, this is nothing like a dream. This is more real than real. You know, these are things you don't forget when they describe things like time, past, present and future. Time kind of bends a little bit in an ayahuasca ceremony, but you can't describe it in the same way. You'll remember very profound experiences, but small pieces. And if you look at what's really interesting in these near-death experiences that I came across, which I've heard about is I never heard of anyone that ran into someone that was living. It was always somebody that had passed away. That's completely consistent. I mean, across the board, whereas in an ayahuasca ceremony, probably more than half the people you experienced in that realm are people that are living and part of your life. And the mythic inventory is very, very different. So there's all that kind of stuff going on. I hear you on one hand. On the other hand, I think I pull up on that a little bit. You know, I just had a terrific interview with a guy named William Peters, and he's probably one of the most well-known researchers of shared-death experience, along with Raymond Moody. Raymond Moody was really the first guy to write about this and talk about it. Again, kudos to Raymond Moody. Great, great work that he's done. But the shared-death experience is truly, truly unique from a scientific or kind of hedge fund trader scientific perspective. It's even more convincing or compelling data because you have living people who didn't even know each other and were in the room and saw the same thing happen, saw the light come down, saw the being, saw the person go through a terminal lucidity event where they were dead and now they come alive and they're dead. So there are different ways to look at this. Yeah, the tricky thing about it, though, is that the best that I can tell from this, what we're consistently being confronted with is something you mentioned just kind of in passing and you definitely mentioned not in passing in the book. You talk about it quite a bit. The crossover experience is the book again, Realer Than Real. And if you take Realer Than Real, which is what this experience in the extended consciousness is consistently reported, it kind of offers a tricky catch-22. We're talking about something in this lesser reality. So in a way, we have to be kind of on guard that everything we're saying is less real than the reality. And I think that's a cautionary tale. The other thing that I think really comes through in the shared death experience that is also throughout your book is that we don't know what that term metaphorical means. We don't know if this experience is being served up uniquely for us or if it's, as you alluded to, metaphorical across culture, if it's for everyone in our tribe, everyone in our family, everyone in the world, everyone in all the other worlds. We don't know what that necessarily means. And there's, to a certain extent, and this is what I really appreciate what you're helping us break through, is those, to a certain extent, are unanswerable questions. And what you do so beautifully in the book is you allow those questions to remain and to come through in the story, but then you also just kind of pull back and go, okay, but let's check this. We do know this, right? We do know that survival is just the reality. We have to accept that, or we're just completely kind of wiffing on the data that's right in our face. And that's a very valuable, valuable place to be because, as we know and as you talked about in your life experience, a lot of people can't get there. I mean, you got there, but a lot of people spend their whole life and never get there are still afraid of death, are still deeply in grief because they can't fundamentally understand this. Or, as we see, and I'm much more conspiratorial probably than you are, but people are, you know, driven to kind of very, very unhealthy control and domination things on a massive scale because they don't want to deal with death or they are into some kind of transhumanism kind of thing just as an escape from death. So there's the metaphor thing is tricky and the greater reality thing is tricky. What do you think about those two things? Well, yeah, the metaphor is tricky and it's really the first thing I stumbled on whatever 25, 30 years ago when I started to hear Joseph Campbell speak, but when he started speaking, I would say that it was more real than real. It was more real than anything I had heard before because when he started speaking of metaphor and speaking metaphor, it hit me at such a deep level and it was that powerful that it changed the whole course of my life. So that's metaphor, that's the power metaphor. The great teachers, the great, you know, religious figures of all, and say we're not traditional institutionalized religion but people that have had the most sway over time are the ones that are able to communicate at that level because to the receiver, it is more real than real as much as we can experience that in this realm because it speaks to them in exactly where they are. But metaphor is tricky because I think we don't really... Well, I don't think we know how to fully articulate it in the West, like what is a metaphor? How do you even know to look for it? You know, when you're watching Star Wars, I mean, Star Wars, George Lucas was friends with Joseph Campbell. In fact, one of the Bill Moyer's episodes in that series was filmed at Skywalker Ranch, which is a huge fan and that really informed and inspired a lot of the whole series, Star Wars. Now, when the average person is sitting there watching Star Wars, I remember when I was a kid, the first one came out. I mean, it blew my mind. That was the first film like that, but it was also the story. But the average person is like, they don't understand that this is, you know, it's mythic. Okay, now it's a spaceship instead of the horse, like Parsithal and, you know, Quests for the Grail. But these stories are... Heroes' Journey. Exactly. So, we don't appreciate it. We don't know how to tell a story. You know, we don't... You look at these cultures that have been able to hold together and it's because they have community. And oftentimes it's also that they respect the elders who have seen it. You know, it's like when you look at the markets, if you try and create a program based on what happens, you know, over the last six months, you're in trouble. You have to go back 50 years, 100 years, then see these patterns. And then it's like, ah, you know, you look at things from 60,000 feet and they look very, very different than when you're in the weeds.  It sneaks past your defenses. You don't know how to stop it. What happens also with humor? That's what I love about satire. You know, some of these shows like the Daily Show, I'm going to go off on a tangent, but that the average person watching the Daily Show back in the day with John Stewart were more informed than people that were watching CNN, MSNBC, Fox News. And it's because that humor, it like opens people up and the truth can get in and they feel it, they get it, they sense it. And the same thing happens, obviously with metaphor. It's massively important, but, you know, we're in a culture that it's just noise everywhere. It's noise and everything has been broken down into such little bites, you know, and the spitting the phone and small images and everything's getting shattered and broken. So there's a path. Twas ever thus.  Bill Moyers, what was his job? Oh, press secretary for LBJ. What role did he play in JFK thing? Hmm, interesting. Why is he on his hero's journey? Maybe to make amends for some of the stuff that he did? I don't know, just speculating. But this is all over the place. And I think it's particularly important because that's what I was one embracing about what you're saying, but also pushing back on what you're saying. I think there's a bunch of people that want to exploit the metaphorical reality of everything and shape it into their narrative, like, oh, you know, this is the metaphor for what's going on right now. And we're in the other thing, I guess, I get excited. So, and I think that also relates to this whole question of how much is our narrative being controlled and served up to us in a way that we can look back at history and go, oh my gosh, yeah, we really were told a story. We were really sold a narrative. We were sold a myth.  That's an awesome, awesome myth. But those guys that signed that document were enslaving in the most unbelievably inhumane way millions and millions of people. And they found a way to make that kind of fit inside their world.   And that is our reality. I'm not saying I hold any guilt or I'm just kind of stepping back and saying, look at that pattern. That is, but is it not true that our story, our metaphor, our narrative is still a powerful, powerful narrative? Because our inalienable rights are truly our rights. They always were.  So I think this thing about narrative is super tricky. And we're certainly living in a time that a lot of people are trying to control that narrative. But the one question I have for you and I guess it would also be kind of a skeptical moment with the book is, do you think we're living in a special time? Because when we talk about the medical link with near-death experience and how there seem to be so many more reported now and maybe that's because we've learned to bring people back through resuscitation. It all points to this we are living in a special time. I'm not, my tone suggests that I'm totally dismissing that. I don't want to be totally dismissive of it, but I don't want to treat it as a fundamental unquestionable truth. What do you think about that, DJ? You know, I I'm also extremely skeptical. I know that so often people think they're living in the most interesting inflection moment, something's going to happen. I I believe it because certain things have happened especially recently literally last year, which I'll mention in a minute, but also because when I look at, again, the markets markets go in patterns and some of them are macro patterns that take about 70 years and they continue to happen every 70 years. You can go back in time to the Renaissance and these types of things, but now with the markets we can actually quantify this. We never had a, how do you quantify this hundreds of years ago, but over the last 150 plus years we have these patterns that measure human emotion and you find them in the charts and one of these patterns, these super patterns that you see in the markets is coming to a head and I will say as somebody who's watched every tick of the market for 36 years that I've never seen anything like what I've seen in the markets that's happening right now and there's good and bad to that. One is that I think we're going to see an epic collapse in the economic system globally. That's a whole show in itself, but you can't convince me otherwise because I just know the stuff from in my bones because I've lived it for so long, but there's so many things that are happening right now, cross currents with currencies and what the Fed has done with interest rates and how we've basically painted ourselves into a corner and we've kicked the can down the road too far, it's over. We're like the coyote that's now going over the edge and doesn't realize there's nothing there anymore. There's no legs under this market, it's over. I think that's happening. If you want to talk about a sign that has changed now I've always felt you'd have it against statistically you want to tell me that there's no intelligent life in the universe, good luck in convincing me that. There have been signs for a very long time and I've always been interested and I've always believed it, but the government, the Defense Department came out what was it seven months ago and laid out there was a very in depth article by a very reputable woman who got a hold of footage from people that were on the Navy carriers, fighter pilots, etc. I'm sure everybody's kind of seen this or heard about it whether it's really registered, it's hard to say but okay so there are literally UFOs flying around on the planet here now and I think to myself there are two stories that are time-blowing that could be happening one would be the near-death experience the other is life from another planet or dimension or wherever they're coming from but they're here right now and what blows my mind is nobody really made much of it it came and it went and so I see some of the signs and just the way things are feeling, people probably feel things now that something is not working in this whole COVID thing and how that's changing so much of how we interact with each other and the surveillance society and all this kind of stuff Yeah but DJ, I mean we just don't know how much of that is engineered and the impending economic collapse we don't know a lot of people would point to that being one of the goals of the current project and you could even tie it if you wanted to go there to this larger world global thing from an interplanetary perspective does it really make sense to have 146 different actors on the stage doing that or do you somehow want to bring all those together that's kind of putting a positive spin on the New World Order globalization but even take the UFO thing it is extremely, extremely complicated and when you talk about controlling the narrative I mean like I take what you just say and go yeah but DJ the real story here is they've been lying their freaking ass off for 70 years not only that but they've been threatening killing probably we can't totally prove it but definitely threatening, terrorizing driving people crazy getting people to sign death wish non-disclosure agreements and only some of these guys have come out these long time 30 year first guys have come out and said yeah I was at the nuclear silo this is what happened the ET came UFO turned on all 10 turned on all 10 of the missiles each one are independent because they have to be independent they have their own power source independent control mechanism anyone could fly over with EME or cosmic rays from the sun could shut them up no we've thought about that they turned them all on then you go over to the Ukraine and back when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union so we don't know any of this but the wall comes down we get the oh yeah that happened over here too but when ET, UFO flew over he turned them all on we were like 15 seconds before launch and then we turned them off but then when you talk to the real top dog like Robert Hastings who I did an email interview with who's studied this more thoroughly than anyone else and completely puts to rest any people who are uncomfortable UFOs oh it's government or it's not no it's been like this this UFO connection is the overwhelming evidence that this is real along with the cross-culture-cross time thing like I interviewed 36 killer Clark but here's the point and I've never made this point on the show I want to and here's an opportunity when you listen really carefully to what Robert Hastings says he has changed his interpretation the narrative of that what he used to say is ET was doing a shot across the bow ET was saying look these nuclear weapons you're playing with be careful you could destroy this planet but you know what he says now he says yeah that maybe but maybe it's in it's of a mutual interest maybe it isn't this big brother god in the sky ET wants protect us maybe he's like bro you know I got a stake in this game that you know quite understand so keep those things under wrap there are so many different ways to interpret this but the one way we cannot interpret it is the narrative we're being given by the people who released and I've had both the people who wrote the article in the New York Times Leslie Cain and Ralph Blumenthal have both been on the show have both done interviews and I'm like come on you got to be kidding this professional counterintelligence agent Lou Elizondo translate as professional liar for the government but not that we need you know professional liars in the government that's what spies do but we're supposed to believe him after 70 years of completely lying about this we're supposed to believe him in that these none of this was classified that's why he's not behind jail because everyone else even takes a photo of inside the submarine and the kid inadvertently there's something in the background he's in jail he's in the Brig you know but Lou Elizondo is out doing interviews and you know what his message is protect our airspace this is an issue of national security I mean this is such a concocted crafted kind of spin of ET's here and you know what you need to worry about is protecting our airspace how does that make any sense to people so I got a theory on that actually you know when you look at things like I'll draw a parallel here if you look at the way now we're seeing the introduction of psychedelics for psychological healing particularly PTSD these types of things they started using for veterans of the Iraq war who are coming back you know basket cases and they started to show unbelievable results using that in therapy and talk therapy integration etc once that happened and they were able to essentially prove it that it helped the veterans they had to start getting into the veterans and then these people I forget his name but they've been trying to get essentially what the government's doing now with the veterans they've been trying for 20 years to be able to do this and as soon as it became for them to do it for the veterans all of a sudden we're starting to hear you know that this is coming now it started everywhere and it's because of that so when you start in my opinion when you start I think Luolizando knows that there's no way that these people can continue to say in government hey man this thing you know we can't tell you or it doesn't exist or whatever but the minute you say this is a matter of national security that these things could blow up our ships now all these senators can't be they can't piss it away and say wow dude do you understand they're flying over our ships we have it on our radar they're flying circles around us they're a danger in our airspace they're worse than the Russians now these senators that always have to act like hawks they're like hey you know what we're going to have to put some money that's my feeling is he's using that whole military system to be able to put it on the map and say if you don't do this you're putting our troops at risk but he's an agent he's an intel agent the only thing that matters is the truth it's back to the militant agnostic Alexa off that alerts me of a potential trading signal okay okay I don't want to I don't okay okay so you know I had Richard Dolan Joe and I really respect Richard Dolan a lot he's probably one of the one of the most reliable UFO researchers we've had he's published amazing books and he kind of takes us a long term historical perspective on it he wrote a book a few years ago called After Disclosure and his point and it was brilliant at the time it turned out to be totally not true was hey there will never be disclosure because the questions will never stop well we had disclosure and the questions never even started we just we just took exactly what they said oh what is Lou what did what did you say Lou oh it's protect okay what about Richard Doty intelligence officer that tortured Paul Benowitz into going crazy with this orchestrated misinformation disinformation campaign that was so diabolical that you know you can't when I had Colonel John Alexander on the show he said if that's true then that guy should be in Leavenworth yeah he should be in Leavenworth we shouldn't allow our military intelligence officers to run operations on American citizens unknowingly because they're trying to protect and trying to do the only thing that Paul Benowitz did is he said hey guys I see the the lights out on Kirkland and I just want you to be aware of it you know so and then they have this whole cover story which is totally fake like this is so deep into the UFO thing like two people are going to understand this the cover story that they do the Mirage Man a video movie that they make says oh well you know what what they were really trying to do is hide the laser and the advanced stealth bomber bullshit what they were doing UFO shit either theirs or ours but the other thing that they never reveal is that Kirkland has nukes which they didn't tell anybody but now we know after the fact Kirkland had nukes there so this story of deceit of lie of misinformation disinformation has always been in play so the only way to understand Lou Elizondo is through that lens and the way to the no one asks those questions like you're part of that organization what do you think of Richard Dodie should he be in jail should he have gone to jail you know or he says like Lou Elizondo says you know it's not my fault my superiors told me to do that who are your superiors let's bring them out you know to whatever extent who you said you fought to make these declassified who classified them when you know I mean it's just so paper thin yeah it's a dark I think that you know I think one of the reasons why there's changes we're at that inflection point is that in so many areas they're losing control of the narrative and you know I think a lot of that I think that the positive thing in social media is you know like if you look at what's going on the people in Russia they're getting enough information through that some of the people really do understand what's happening because they're the misinformation is insane but they really now run the risk of you know of some type of internal uprising I mean they'll knock it down and get ugly but the same thing is happening in China so at the same time there's so much noise and they're putting so much disinformation inside of all of that information that people are confused and so nobody shows what the hell is going on but they're losing control of the narrative but the best thing they can do is just to confuse the shit out of everybody and I think that's so much of what's going on I think they just don't want people to know what the hell is going on whether right or wrong it's just noise it's become noise and so you know you see and that's super interesting to me in a way it's really really relevant to this conversation in a way that a lot of people don't see or of course they don't because I have my own unique interpretation of it but that is that what the near-death experience is really about is bringing us to the edge of the chasm and then we have to choose to jump over or not jump over and the chasm turns out to be just barely a footstep it's like so easy to jump over but a lot of people look down and to them it looks like the Grand Canyon and they can't jump over it and the point is are you more are you more than a biological robot in meaningless universe are you connected to the light is there a hierarchy of consciousness is there right and wrong you knew that when you were five years old and you put that piece of candy in your pocket at the corner store of course you know that to be true anything that makes you question that anything that makes you question you know I don't have to worry about that because I'm at a special time or the narrative is this way that way now it's really pretty easy just choose the light keep choosing the light over and over again what your book the crossover experience does is give us more and more reasons to be confident in that to make that a highly actionable event to say is this science actionable and for you to hold it and go yep I can step over I am more I am greater and I feel confident in making that decision that's what I think it's all about to me yeah yeah I could imagine if somebody handed me that book after you know my son had passed like right after it man that would have helped me a lot and that's why I created this it's you know the things that I've done like when I was racism was something I was struggling with personally and it helped me to kind of crystallize what I really believed and then it's like I want to give it out there they're the answers I don't like giving the answers and that's not what's being done in you know crossover I think it's in learning to ask the right questions or necessarily that are there any right questions but ask questions and to give them some context within which to ask them because the answers are going to be different for everybody you know not that one's right and one's wrong but how we perceive things how we understand things how things penetrate you know at whatever level they're going to penetrate at us based on you know where we are how open we are so that's what I think is important about something like this to you know that's the whole thing I've been trying to do is challenge provoke and inspire but you really got to push somebody into an uncomfortable place I think to get them to be like you know hey but but never push on them and answer just say man just take a look you've got to ask questions especially now I mean how the hell do you know you if you watch Fox News and MSNBC you're living on two different planets you know it's just like in the markets the financial markets you got the guy from Goldman saying this is the greatest buying opportunity of all time and then you got a guy over at JPMorgan saying that you know these markets are actually these are both you know MBA PhDs top of their field how the what are they looking at they're looking at the same numbers for the most part you know so that's it you've got to ask questions you can't follow this guy or that guy because you know because one of these guys is going over the let you know but he's incredibly confident you have to be open you have to be flexible pliable you got to ask a lot of questions and then just be willing to to be I think you have to be willing to look stupid sometimes you know that's not easy to do and you have to learn how to be okay with getting your head handed to you whether it's in the markets I started up a jazz club once and I got my head handed to me it was a really cool jazz club and the whole thing and I but I didn't realize I didn't I couldn't handle being around that many people that wanted to like talk to me crowds so the place collapsed and it was like embarrassing because I'd always had success in business but it's like man I learned more from that you know more from our failures from our successes there's no question so the whole thing is just ask questions be willing to take risks not stupid risks but you know what you might consider a risk you know the downside can be we'll be pure upside whatever happens one way or the other but you got to you know you got to put throw yourself into the deep end you know you cannot if you sit in the in the surf you're going to get the shit kicked out of you you got to go into the deep end and just Richard war had a great saying I actually just finished another book I had to do the book at the same time as this one because the research was driving me insane it was so right it was so it just got monotonous because you're just going so I started writing a book and my son Sean had asked me that he I'd written something and he's like man you got to turn this into the book but the end of the book there's this great saying it's from Richard war he was in one of my films in a poem but he said that basically the metaphor was you have to learn to breathe underwater and that's why you have to jump into the deep end you have to just let go and just give your body as a coral castle and learn how to breathe underwater I think that's kind of what it is because you just you know you've got to ask you just got to let go I have a hard time a little bit easier now but it's not easy for a skeptics it's your best and worst enemy but I think you have to have that the yin and the yang you know it's the struggle if you don't struggle with your own self you're asleep and you can't be asleep anymore in this stage you can't so anyway that's my theory awesome man that's a great way to end it so DJ where do you plan on going with this the crossover experience you have a new book out where are your projects taking you in the future I don't know that I do another book these these are really hard I found film work easier but I don't feel like film right now and I think one of the things I need to do because it's been a really difficult kind of two years and just now as I've launched it I started to listen to jazz again you know my wife comes home she goes oh my god I'm so happy to hear now she doesn't love my music but she's like you know and something about music but especially jazz I grew up on jazz which none of my friends listen to or liked I don't know anything like rock and roll but so I'm looking at opening another jazz club so that puts you know it's a typical DJ move you know I I mean I don't know I also have I want I'm going to go down to Perugin I think and kind of do that scene and years ago I went out to the desert kind of sit on a rock for you know I was going to do 40 days and 40 nights and I got physically got the shit kicked out of me was like a like a crazy desert in the United States so I've always got something but you know I think I might go into where I where I my greatest Waterloo I call it was my jazz club it was an amazing club but I couldn't handle being there I loved building it but I never I never accounted for the fact that human beings were going to come in in large numbers as soon as they did I literally my friend said dude you're crazy they'll think you're crazy close it right now I almost did like literally the week it open so I just like can't do this man but I did it and that was a mistake so now I'm thinking go going back to my Waterloo and you know giving it another shot I miss the music you know but I don't know about another look I'll send you the one that I'm finishing it's actually it's called punching waves because you know if you read it you know the life has been kind of crazy but that was good very cathartic but I think now it's time to listen to some jazz and relax a little bit DJ I really hope people check out the book again the crossover experience it's been great having you on skeptico thanks for joining me thank you so much and one thing I want to do is really thank Jeffrey Loom at NDERF anybody that wants to really learn about you know really go through these you don't have to go through thousands of them but you can really search through them and get such a great sense of what's happening there and if they want to the crossover website I've created that as kind of a hub where you'll find research reports scientific reports I have playlists of what I would consider some of the top testimonials links to IANDS all of the different NDERF sites so it really focuses on just NDES but that's at crossoverexperience.com and for whoever buys the book which is also interesting if it's the e-book at the back where the notes are the bibliography those are all live links directly to the testimonials that what I pulled out of the testimonials came from so you can go directly to all the testimonials I worked with so that's just you know something that might help people Thanks again to DJ Kadhajian for joining me today on Skeptico the one question I tee up from this interview is how do you find clarity in these biggest most important questions about how to live your life how do you choose let me know, love to hear from you lots more to come on Skeptico stick around until next time take care and bye for now