 Welcome everybody. I have an interview coming up in a minute with the very excellent Dr. Penny Sartori about her new book, The Transformative Power of Near-Death Experiences. Interesting book, you know, I've covered near-death experiences a lot and I always have a little bit of a different take on it. It's especially fun to talk to such an accomplished scientific researcher as Dr. Penny Sartori, but I wanted to contrast that with a little movie clip, maybe this one. Code Blue, Room 134. You know, there's nothing quite like Seth MacFarlane in a teddy bear costume. I just never could bring myself to watch those movies, but it's an interesting cultural overlay on this topic of near-death experience, because of course one of the questions is, how, to what extent is the medical establishment responsible for this overwhelming fear of death we have, and to what extent does near-death experience relieve that fear of death and lessen the grief associated with death? As we've talked about before, it clearly does. It's kind of overwhelming, better than any other treatment we know of, but to what extent is medicine responsible for perpetuating it, or are they just kind of reflecting what we already feel, believe, and have culturally instilled in us and our kids and all the rest of that. So that's one of the topics we talked about today with Dr. Sartori. We also talk about this light and love thing, which I think is so interesting. It's really the focus of her latest book. It coincides really with the data. If you look at Dr. Jeff Long, he's collected the data, and it's certainly about light and love 80 to 90 percent of the time. But what about those other times? What about the hellish death experiences? What about the black void that some people face and fear so greatly? So those are a couple of things we talk about. We also talk about the connection between near-death experience and other transformative experiences. Very, very interesting stuff from just a terrific guest who really does have a great new book. I hope you check out the transformative power of near-death experiences. My interview with Dr. Penny Sartori is coming up next on Skeptico. Today, we welcome NDE researcher and author Dr. Penny Sartori to Skeptico. Dr. Sartori has along with Kelly Walsh who you'll hear about in a minute. They have written a new book titled, here it is, if you're watching this video, the transformative power of near-death experiences. How the messages of NDE's positively impact the world. And she's here to talk about that. So Penny, welcome to Skeptico. You've been on one time before, but I didn't have the pleasure of talking to you directly, I think that time. So thanks so much for joining me. Oh, you're welcome. Hi, Alex. Really nice to be here. Well, it's nice to have you on. And this new book is, like I was saying, it really is terrific. We have a lot to talk about. This book is very inspirational. The stories are fascinating. And I know you're very humble about your contributions vis-a-vis your writing partner, Kelly Walsh. But I think you bring so much to this work. And in particularly for me and for Skeptico, because we are always interested in being grounded in the science of these things. And I think that's really so much about what you do and who you are because you are a scientist. You're a PhD. You have this interesting balance. Tell people about your background who don't know you. And then a little bit about how your background relates directly to this really terrific new book. Well, I used to work as a nurse and I was in intensive care for 17 years. And because of the nature of my job, I saw death on a daily basis. And it was one night shift in particular and I was looking after a dying patient. And he had a really unpleasant death and it really very much upset me. And it's something that really made me think what happens when we die? What is death all about? And at that point, you know, I hadn't really thought a great deal about it. And that upset me so much it just set me on this kind of like path really to live to learn about death. And the more I read about death, the more interested I became. And then someone gave me a book and it was Betty Edie's book called Embraced by the Light. And I can remember reading that and I was thinking, wow, this just seems such an amazing thing. What if this is real? You know, because my nursing background, I was really quite skeptical of this. And I thought, it's got to be some sort of hallucination or maybe it's the way that the brain is dying down. But I think what the more I read about these, the more inspired I became to read more. And I was just fascinated. And I thought, well, I'm working in intensive care. Maybe I can do my own study. And that's what I did. I kind of and that all kind of came about. And I had Professor Paul Badham and Dr. Peter Fennick, who is they're both experts in the field of near death experiences. And it was just a wonderful thing to be able to connect with with patients and find out what it is that they recalled from the time that they were unconscious. Because it's something I'd never taken the time to ask about before, you know, so Well, you know, that idea of that that study, which I've referenced so many times on the show, because, you know, there's so many ways to break down this topic of near death experience. And as we're just talking about in this book that you've written, it's it's very inspirational. And that's terrific. I mean, there's a lot to there's a lot to be inspired about. And there's a lot of culture change that needs to go around this. But the scientific angle, and that's what I always thought was terrific about this research is, as you know, there's been this ongoing debate. Well, you it's it's not scientific. They're just these anecdotal accounts. And besides, you could never study this scientifically. And I always like to point people to your research. And I say, No, here's really a wonderfully simple experiment that was done. That one, both adds incredible scientific evidence suggesting the reality of near death experiences, but also shows us a path how you can you can apply science to this. Can you just go over in in broad strokes, the study that you did about people's recollection of their resuscitation and how the one control how the control group was set up and how that was basically done. Okay, so what I did was over the period of five years, I interviewed for the first year, I interviewed every single patient who survived their admission to the intensive care unit. And I wanted to make sure that I didn't miss any patients. And what I found at the end of the first year was that I was actually spending longer in the hospital than I was at home. So I couldn't sustain that for the following five, four years. So what I found, what I did then is I narrowed down the kind of the group I was interviewing. So I only approached patients who had undergone cardiac arrest and survived. And although the sample was a little smaller than the first year, what I found is that in 30 out of 39 patients who had been successfully resuscitated, seven of them recalled a near death experience. And that's, you know, there's nearly 18% of patients who survived cardiac arrest had this kind of experience. And what I also did is I documented the blood results at the time I looked at the drugs that were given. And I also interviewed the staff members who were looking after the patient. So the nurses and the doctors, I asked them if one of the patients reported the out of body component, I would then try and verify what it was that they wrote, what they described. And I would, I verified that with the nurses and the doctors who were looking after them. With the control group, I had then patients who'd been successfully resuscitated, but they didn't have a near death experience, or they didn't have the out of body component. And I asked them if they could describe what they thought that we had done to them. And they were like, What do you mean? I don't I was dead. I don't remember anything, right? Exactly. That's right. And they were saying, Why are you asking me this? I have no idea what you did to me at all. Like, and the majority of them couldn't even guess, they couldn't make a guess as to what we'd done. And then a few of them then did make a guess. And it was based on TV hospital dramas that they've been watching. And what I found is that there were errors and misconceptions in what they thought we had done to them. And so some of them thought that they had been DC shocked with the paddles. And they hadn't those people had just had the resuscitation, the CPR, and drugs administered, such as adrenaline or noradrenaline. And then some of them made educated guesses. But the place where they thought that we put the paddles onto their body was completely erroneous. It was wrong. It was incorrect. So data data, you know, this is great stuff. Yeah. So it just, you know, it just goes to show that the people who did report the near death experience described their experience with accuracy, whereas the control group weren't, weren't accurate. And they, most of them couldn't even hazard a guess. And so, you know, it just makes you think. Well, it does more than make you think, right? I mean, because again, to me, the great thing about it is, is in this ongoing debate, which I guess we have to talk about as well, but in this ongoing debate among people who claim to have some scientific agenda that makes them diametrically opposed to this science, which doesn't make any sense. I mean, I don't know, but, but the claim has always been there's you can't prove it. There's no scientific evidence of it. And, you know, this what you've done and continue to do directly flies in the face of that. But I want to return to really talking about the book, the new book, the transformative power of near death experiences, because in the conclusion to that book, you write that your main purpose was to further this public understanding of and awareness of the near death experience. And I guess my first thought was like, wow, are we still there? We're still, you know, and he is a real kind of thing. Haven't we got past that? Then I guess, you know, the more I read and in particular, your kind of fiery push back against the medical community and some of the problems that it has in really wrapping itself around some of these ideas. I was like, yeah, I mean, that's work that does need to continue to go on. Do you want to speak to that a little bit? Yeah. Now, one of the things that I find is that, you know, still people are not educated about near death experiences and what they are. So, you know, when someone has a near death experience, they wake up in the intensive care unit, and they're like, well, what's just happened to me? And very often, they're afraid to talk about it or they're afraid to share it. And I think what would be really, really important is that if nurses and doctors are trained to recognise if a patient has an experience or to gently say to them, when you are unconscious, you might have had something unusual happening. And so it leads then it gives them that option to discuss what they've experienced as well. Because a lot of people have this psychological turmoil, if they're unable to understand their experience or integrate it into their life. So it's crucial that on their recovery or when they regain consciousness that there is that supportive environment in which they can share their experience and try to make sense of it. Now, all the nurses or doctors have to do at that point is to validate that they've had an experience that other patients have reported. And then further down the line, they could, you know, they could refer them to further resources, such as online groups or, you know, internet sources or books or whatever is that can help that person. You know, but Penny, all that sounds well and good until you really look at some of these experiences and what it does. In this book, in one of the early chapters, your co-author Kelly tells very openly about her near-death experience. But she also tells about this spiritual transformation that she undergoes in the hospital. And for those, you know, you haven't read it, she wakes up and she is singing, singing these Christian kind of things. And I mean, it would be almost impossible to accept or expect a medical staff to embrace them the way that she did, the way that she was. I mean, they were very accepting. But I mean, wow, I mean, that's almost too much to ask. And they did sedate her a little bit, which you can understand why. So it's tricky, isn't it? Because it's really easy to say, oh, you know, the medical staff should be supportive and shouldn't be completely, you know, ready to send someone to the loony bin when they say they saw God. But on the other hand, some of these experiences that people have are really, really strange. Yeah, they are, you know, like Kelly's and as she said, you know, she was trying to escape the wards. She was naked. She was trying to get off the wards. She felt that she that was it. There's nothing wrong with her now. She was fine. And she was saying that she'd been talking to God and the angels. And, you know, for someone who has absolutely no knowledge of these spiritually transformative experiences, that can make them appear as if they are mentally unstable. So I think it's important that healthcare workers are trained to recognize the possibility that these experiences can that these patients can be in at the beginning or the acute phase of a spiritually transformative experience, so that then further down the line, there is more support that can be put into place for these patients as well. I think it's so important. You know, one of the things I wanted to talk about, and it's kind of a touchy subject, but I think you're the perfect person to really kind of put some of this out there and really mull it over. This book is extremely positive. It's about positivity. Kelly is all about that. Her brand is positivity, and it's about light and love and that the NDE experience transforms our fear of death and and helps us overcome grief. Two important scientific findings we have from a psychological perspective, we know those two things, and those things are very important when you consider everything we do to treat people who have a fear of death or experience grief, and we have all sorts of medications and other things lined up for those people and yet, you know, here's something that has an amazing transformative power. But my real point was the light in love and positivity thing, because I'm one hand, I'm all about that and I'm all about, you know, one of my best teachers all all along said, you know, the secret to the ascent is to always look up and to and I think that also I don't only believe that from my personal experience and from what I've learned, but the data leads us there, too. It leads us towards light and love being the overwhelming experience that people have. But you saw coming here. It's not all light and love. Some people have very dark experiences. Some people are broken from near death experiences in a way. Certainly some people have a lot of trouble integrating back in to their life with their near this experience. And then we have the whole other aspect of it, which is, as we're just talking about, we have a medical community that they don't seem to be they have an ulterior motive in the light and love thing as well. So there's a lot to pull apart there and I want to spend some time doing it. Let's just start, though, with your general thoughts on the light and love and positivity versus not so much. Well, with the light and love and the positivity, that seems to be when people are able to really integrate their experience and they have that good support to do it. Now, this isn't something that happens overnight either. This is it's a process so it can take months, it can take years in many cases, you know, I've got people who have contacted me and they'll ask for questions and help with understanding their experience and they'll come back to me a few years later and ask more questions. And you know, there's one person who I've been in touch with in 10 years, we've been off and on emailing and finally she feels that she's in the place where she really gets it and she's fully integrated it and fully understanding of what's happened to her. But you know, it's not an easy thing to process because there's a lot of adjustments that come after a near-death experience. It's a total change in the person's values. So everything changes their ethics change, you know, their morals change. Sometimes, you know, they have, they change their job because they're no longer aligned with what they were doing in their previous job. They feel like it's all, it's not right. And so they leave their job, you know, and there's all that angst that goes with it. There's a high divorce rate as well, you know, a lot of people no longer recognise their spouses because they've changed that much and so it can lead to that division between them as well. And so the integration of the experience is crucial and I think that's where medical personnel come in because they can really help with that if they were trained in how to deal with near-death experiences. But then you've also got the really scary distress in near-death experiences which are so much more difficult to research because no one wants to talk about them. You know, there's not many researchers want to talk about them either. And I had a few of the distress in cases in my hospital research as well. And I can remember talking to this one lady, she'd had a cardiac arrest and when I was interviewing her on the ward, she's told me about the beginning of the experience and then she said, oh, it was like, then I started looking, I could see the flames rising and I was looking into hell. I could feel the flames of hell. And then she started to cry and she really, really became distressed. And it was to the point where I had to terminate that interview with her. And she was begging me afterwards, she said, please tell me that's not going to happen when I die. And what the only thing I could say is that some of these experiences start off in a very distressing way. But then sometimes they can change into that pleasant experience as well. And that was the only thing I could say at the time to really kind of help her. And it didn't help really. I went back to see the lady about two days later. And she said, I just really can't talk about it anymore. It's too distressing for me. And so I left it at that. And then when I followed her up a few months later, she'd actually died as well. And you know, one thing I remember is when I was a student nurse and at the time we had no idea about how to treat this particular lady because she was terrified of dying. And I can remember we every time we used to pass her bedside, she would try and grab onto us and hold us. And her nails would dig into our flesh and she'd say, please don't let me die. I died before and it's not nice. We didn't understand that. So we chatted with her family and the family said, well, you know, about five years ago, she did have a cardiac arrest, but we don't know anything more. Now, on reflection and having that had the benefit of doing this research, I think it's possible that that lady had had a distress in near death experience at the time that she'd had that cardiac arrest. And so she was really quite terrified as well. But of course, there's a lot of stigma involved with the distressing kind of experiences because a lot of people feel what have I done? Am I a bad person that I had this distressing experience? You know, and it's not that at all, you know, even people of really good moral character, they can still have an unpleasant and distressing experience. But don't we have to be careful there because we can't say we can't say either way? I mean, that's really the point is we don't know. And I also think that it also speaks to the idiosyncratic nature of these experiences and these accounts. And one of the things I always find difficult in talking about this with folks is that both are true. They're highly idiosyncratic. So they're just seem to be tailored for you for something that you need. But we can't say that scientifically. All as we can say is that seems to be it. But when we flip over on the other side, you know, I guess that doesn't mean we can't say some things with a certain degree of certainty. You know, I really always appreciate the work that Dr. Jeff Long has done in compiling a lot of these accounts and statistically looking at them and, you know, back to the light and love thing. Overwhelmingly, it is about light and love. Overwhelmingly, it is about people experiencing God for lack of a better word, spirit and light. And I guess I'm torn between kind of playing it both sides. I can jump over and argue either side and say, hey, you know, it's not all light and love. Remember that person that saw hell and then I can jump over in the other side and say, yeah, but 80, 90% of the time it really is about light and love. It really is about this transformative, powerful experience that tells us that the deepest questions we have about who we are and why we're here are answered in a very deeply positive spiritual way. So do you want to speak to that, to how we deal with both aspects of that? Well, that's it with the positive then, because there is that such a transformation in the way that they are afterwards. All of a sudden, their life isn't just about them at the center of their own little world. They see themselves as part of this great interconnected whole. And so it's about being of service to others and doing good for others as well. And so the benefits of it as well can be far reaching. So it's not just about their own personal gain. It's about how they can help others, but not only just people around them as well. They have a greater concern for the planet and they can take a step back and look at how human behavior is affecting our lovely planet that we live on. And so they see things from a totally different perspective as well. And, you know, that is something again that is potentially measurable because there was that study done in 1998 by Growth Marnat and Summers who looked at patients who had survived a near death episode. You know, and so some people that they compared the group who'd had a near death experience with people who had survived death, but didn't have a near death experience. And they found that, you know, their conclusions were that it was there were marked changes in both groups, but even more so in the group that had had the near death experiences. And they concluded that it was the near death experience itself that had instigated those great changes, you know. And the examples of people in the book of what they're doing now, you know, you look at Kelly, my co-author. And she has such wonderful ideas, you know, for this animated character, cartoon character of positivity, princess and all the merchandise and things like that. And what she's doing, instead of making millions for herself, which is that great potential, what she wants to do is to turn her ideas into making money to help other people. And that's, you know, that I think that is just amazing. It's not about who it's about how we can integrate and help on a global scale as well. And, you know, it's not just Kelly, there's other examples of what people have done as a result of their experience. Like Gigi, for example, in chapter two, she struggled for, well, a good few years trying to come to terms with her near death experience. And she recognised that need for support. Now, in America, you do have I and the International Association of Near Death Studies, but in the UK, we don't have that. You know, many years ago there was a support group, but that's not been running for many years. And so Gigi now has set up NDE UK and that's beginning to grow. And that's what she's hoping now we can do is to grow that and it could be a hub where people can meet up, but also where therapists who specialise in near death experiences can be available so that people can be directed to further help and support. Let me bring up a couple of other issues that have come up for me over the years of covering the kind of near death experience research that you've really been right at the centre in for years and years, which is tremendous because when you do talk about this very inspirational book that, you know, by the way, one thing I'd encourage anyone just go to Amazon and just start reading it. You know, you can freely look inside and look at you won't be able to stop. I mean, that is the awesome thing with these near death experience accounts. We can tell you that they're transformative and that they're positive and that they're light and love and they make you feel hopeful and better and all those things. But you just have to go read them to get a flavour for it. Now, having said that, I've done, you know, what comes to mind is a couple of shows that I did with folks who had a very intense near death experience connected to Jesus and that was spiritually transformative in a very Christian way. And then, of course, they took it in a very dogmatic way. There's this one guy from Australia, thank God he's from Australia, he's not from the US, the US Christian thing on him. But, you know, he runs around all these churches around the world and then all these other people have Christian near death experiences and he is very keen and very aggressive with the idea that this experience is fundamentally a Christian experience and it supports the primacy of Christianity. And my pushback was that's just not what the data says, you know, so you can go out in there and blab that all you want, but this is where we do need science to interface with spirituality because I'm not saying, hey, maybe he's right, you know, and maybe Jesus is going to point his, shake his finger at me when I get up there. But I look at the data, the evidence overwhelmingly, it says that this is, this cannot be pigeonholed into a specific religious experience. But again, back to the negative, here is somebody who's very much doing that, has a lot of support for it from a lot of people. So a couple of issues there to talk about, wherever you want to grab it. Yeah, so, well, these experiences, they occur in every different culture, you know, and they're interpreted according to the culture of that person. And so they can, you know, for example, in India, the cultural kind of experience is meeting up with the Yamduts or Yamaduts, which are messengers of Yama, the God of the dead. And instead of the life review, they kind of have that they meet up with Chitragupta, the man with the book of deeds. And so he looks in the book to see what they've kind of done with their life as well. And that is very similar to the life review. So I think people can interpret it according to their experience. So it's almost as if they're tapping into the collective unconscious and they're interpreting the experience through their own cultural filter, if you like. So, you know, the guy you were talking about, the Australian guy, if he's kind of been brought up in a Christian tradition, he's interpreted it in that way as well. But he would say no, Penny. I mean, yeah, he's heard all that. And he says, no, you don't get it. It is about it is about Jesus. And I spoke with Jesus and I asked Jesus about that. And Jesus said, no, it's this. So in here is I think the problem in the interface with science in that, you know, people like you, real scientists, you've looked at that. We've kept you just on spinning on prove it, prove it, prove it, prove it to the extent that we haven't been able to really look at some of these deeper questions. But there's some real deep questions here in terms of, you know, back to the idiosyncratic nature of this. What does it mean that they're so idiosyncratic? What does it mean that this guy's experience, he's not making it up. It is distinctly Christian in a way that if I'm gonna kind of defend him a little bit, he cannot get away from the fact that it is distinctly Christian. It isn't saying, it's, you know, it's Christian, but it can be Hindu too. No, it was purely Christian. Yeah, that's a really, really good point because how do we get to the bottom of those things as well then, you know? Because we kind of, by focusing on just the scientific, we're not looking at questions like that either, you know? So I think that is definitely something that we'd have to get beyond and to answer those important questions as well. How would we even begin to? I mean, do you have any thoughts on how we, what would be that next level of research that would help us probe some of those questions? Oh, I don't know. I think maybe what would be great is would be to have like a universal group of researchers from all different cultures. I think that would be so powerful if we got people from all different cultures to all get together and pool their kind of resources and to share their thoughts amongst it as well, get some sort of real kind of working group together rather than people doing it in isolation as well. It's working together in unity and then discussing the ideas as well, not just within that group, but also very publicly as well. You know, Penny, a related question, I think, is you're battling against a medical institution that has a lot at stake in not giving up, not giving in to what you're talking about. I mean, whether we like it or not, the medical institution is built this death machine and this fear of death that we have completely is integrated into it. And without getting into who's to blame for that or whatever, that is the nature of the game that it's played. Death must be avoided at all costs. And oh, if your death and oh my gosh, your mother is going to die. It's in there all over the place. But there is, so that materialistic science, I guess, I sometimes struggle with the fact that there seems to be a reality to that as well as part of the near death experience. And before I get too far field, because I want you to talk about that first part in the death culture of medicine, but I also want you to talk about, you know, we do bump into some materialistic science kind of things when we say, hey, we're resuscitating people and we're seeing more NDEs. Why? Why does God need the resuscitation to bring forth NDEs, right? I mean, why is there, at every turn this, there's this kind of double take, like, well, that does imply a biological trigger or component to it. So are the death culture medicine people right in a way? Oh, I don't know. I think that was one of the biggest things really that was one of my wake-up calls because, you know, working in intensive care, you do see that death denial totally all the time. And it's, you know, that patient I mentioned in the beginning, it was what he knew he was dying. He wanted me to leave him alone, to let him die in peace. And I knew that I had to treat him because that was my job to do that. I had no choice. And the man wanted to die. And, you know, it's, and then after that, I became a little bit depressed after that. And every time I went into work, I would see patients who would die in. There was no kind of long-term thing for them at all. And yet we were still treating them with all of the different medications, all everything in an attempt to stop them from dying. And death is the most natural thing in the world. It's going to happen to every one of us. And we just don't think about it at all. And I think as a society, if we thought about our own mortality a bit more and thought about what death is, then it would give us a completely different understanding of life because that's what it's done for me. You know, my research has taught me so much about life. And in fact, my research has really empowered me. And when I started off on it, my friends, they were saying, Penny, you must be so depressed. What a depressing and morbid subject to talk about. But in fact, you know, I've never been so empowered and felt really, I don't know, happy if you like as a result of learning what I've learned through my studying of death. So, you know. Well, I think removing that fear of death, which near death experience science does for so many people. And I'm careful in using the word science there because we know documented cases that the near death experience, that is people who have it, have this reduction in fear of death. But the real prize is that the study of near death experience science, buying the transformative power of near death experiences will reduce your fear of death. And that's a good thing because a lot of people carry around a lot of anxiety on a daily basis about death. And it's sometimes it's not even, you know, at the forefront of their mind, it's just kind of gnawing at the back of their mind. Yeah, that's right. And you know, it's something I'd never really kind of thought of in depth. And when I started reading these experiences and thought, wow, and I really engaged with them as well. And it's given me a different perspective now on my own kind of death as well. And I know I'm gonna die. I don't know when and I don't know how. But I think, you know, when it happens, I think the perhaps anxiety I might have felt perhaps won't be there because I've got some insight into what to expect, you know. Whether it plays out like that, I don't know. But to be honest with you, I really, it's something that I'm not fearful of. I'm not fearful of the actual transition itself, but perhaps more about the mode in which I die, maybe, you know, but it's really made me consider my own mortality. You know, Penny, we kind of skip past that one question. I really wanna get your thoughts on it. What about the materialistic nature of some of this stuff? The biological nature, the science as we know it nature of this. Like I said, the fact that there's more near-death experiences as we resuscitate people, suggests that there's a biological component. You know, my friend Zach had a question he sent over about people who don't have sight have a different kind of near-death experience. There's all these different aspects of our physical being that then translate into the experience in a way that's hard to really totally make sense of if it's completely a spiritual experience. So what do you think is going on in this interplay between the spiritual and the physical? I don't know. I think there's like loads of different triggers for these experiences as well. And you know, one of them is that the fact that we're able to, more people are surviving a critical illness and a cardiac arrest than what would have done many years ago. You know, our science, our technology has all developed now and we've got much greater, better resuscitation techniques. We've got better medical equipment and things which are all helping people to have a greater survival rate of these things. And I think more and more people then are surviving these critical illnesses and more and more people are reporting near-death experiences. But from a wider perspective, I've come to think that we're undergoing a global awakening. And I think these experiences are showing us, are waking us all up. And I think because more people are experiencing the near-death experience, more people are being aware of them. We've got the internet now, so it's easier to share your experience and more and more people are taking an interest in the experiences. And I think what we're seeing is that shift of an attitude because I've definitely noticed that since I began my research. You know, when I first started it, it was very difficult to find people who would share their experience. But over the years, more and more people have begun to engage with me. And when my last book came out, The Wisdom of Near-death Experiences, I was just inundated with emails and I've still got over 14,000 emails to reply to because it's a full-time job in itself, reply into these emails. So I think what we're seeing on a wider scale is that we're undergoing a big awakening. And I think there are people who are still in denial of the reality of these kinds of experiences, but I think there's gonna be far more people who are really gonna be waking up to what these experiences are, really. See, I just really have a problem with that. Maybe, but maybe not. I feel like there's such a cultural overlay that we do on that, you know what I mean? If you live in a Tibet and you have a tradition of reincarnation for hundreds of years, is this whole thing even kind of meaningful to you? Or if you live in some country that's torn by a civil war and you're just trying to survive, is any of this stuff meaningful to you? And I hear this all the time, this consciousness revolution, and I get it on one hand. I definitely see it in what I've done for the last 10 years as well, but I'm skeptical too. I mean, how long? We don't even know our history. Our history of being on this planet for 10,000 years or 6,000 years or 20,000 years or a million years or 10 million years, we have no clue. So how can we begin to even try and pinpoint this trend that's happened in such a short period of time? Do you share any of those concerns when we start overlaying these big picture patterns on what's happening? And again, I just gotta throw in one more thing. God really needs our help on this one, right? God really needs our help on this consciousness transformation. Couldn't do it on his own. He really had to pull us in and write these books on your death experience. Somehow that just doesn't wash. Do you think our consciousness could be evolving to the next level? These are just ideas that kind of make sense to me at the moment. I might kind of do more research and think completely differently in a few years' time. So it's just the way of making sense of the data at this point in time. And I think that can change so drastically according to whatever discoveries we make as well. So I have to keep as open a mind as possible and it kind of explore all sort of possibilities as well. And I think the thing to me at the moment is making sense is that perhaps our consciousness is evolving to that next level. And perhaps that's why more and more people are beginning to have near-death experiences and also spiritually transformative experiences, you know? I don't know. Fair enough. I love that answer. The book, let's talk about one more story chapter in the book before I let you go. I really like the chapter that Krista wrote Beyond Heaven because it had so many of the aspects of what we're talking about. One, I love the fact that she has this download of information because I've heard that from so many different people that have had different experiences, not just near-death experiences, but psychedelic experiences, alien abduction experiences, which we won't even talk about, but have to be talked about, have to be considered. I mean, John Mack from Harvard studied them. We can't study them, but there's a lot of people that talk about download of information and what was fascinating to me about Krista's download was it's about love and so many spiritual people throughout time. And you can read their amazing stories from hundreds of years ago, right up to the present, have had a similar download. It's about love, which gets back to what this book is really all about and the positivity. But here's the twist. If you read folks Krista's chapter in this book, she also has a distressing NDE. She has the shadow figures in there. She also has what you kind of touched on. She has a lot of problem integrating the near-death experience back into her life and she gets divorced. And you're like, gosh, if you're learning to love everybody, you can't get along with that guy you've been sleeping next to all this time. I mean, really, that was the upshot of the whole thing. I mean, there's a lot of, I love that. I love the complexity of it because life, as most of us experience it, is more complicated than just papering it over with a big furry heart on our chest and say we're all about white and love. So do you wanna talk about that chapter at all and about the download of information and about the integration? Yeah, and I think the good thing, the really nice thing about Krista's example as well is the fact that, oh, yeah, she did have that kind of, she did split with her husband and have that divorce, but they remain really best of friends throughout it as well. And they've still got that, you've still got a link of love between you. But another interesting thing as well is that how she learned to kind of deal with that experience and to integrate it. And also, when I first met Krista, it was by Erisk, I watched her, one of her videos on YouTube, she attended one of the IONs conferences and I was really blown away as to how she was able to adapt what she'd learned in a near-death experience into her medical practice as well. And so I think it's really great that she's able to recognize other people who've had the experiences as well because she can be of such great help and benefit. And again, she was trained in that very scientific mode and then having that experience has opened her eyes and given her a different perspective on how she works as a physician's assistant as well. So I think her chapter is really, really great as well. Well, there's so many great chapters in the book. You're to be congratulated, Dr. Sartori. It's terrific. I really encourage people, like I say, I don't even have to tell you to buy it. Just go take a look and everything will take care of itself after that, the transformative power of near-death experiences. Anything else we need to let people know? I guess one thing that you kind of touched on, but the proceeds are going to charity, is that true? Yes, that's right. So all of the royalties from the book will be given to the Love Care Share Foundation and that is a charity that was set up by Kelly Walsh, my co-author and it's all about supporting children's projects on a global basis. So it's about really empowering young children so that they grow up in a very supportive way and all sorts of projects all around the world. So that's what we're hoping to do is to kind of follow on with what we've learned from our experiences and continue to put it to good use. Put it into action, right? Well, awesome. Thank you again so much for joining me today, Penny. Thank you, thank you, Alex. Best of luck with this book. Thank you, it's been great. Thanks again to Dr. Sartori for joining me today and it's kept to go. One question I guess I tee up from this interview is what do you make of the light and love stuff? Can we hold onto that as something that the near-death experience science is telling us? Is that a fundamental part of the near-death experience or is it just another cultural overlay, another distraction that we're drawn to because we want it to be that way? I think these are the kind of important level two questions that we never get to. The level one question being, is near-death experience really happening or is it just the dying brain? I mean, how long will the materialistic, idiot scientific medical morons keep us spinning our wheels on that kind of question? One that's really been answered conclusively so we can get onto these more interesting questions. So let's jump ahead. Let's answer that question the best we can. Let me know your thoughts. You can do it here. You can do it through the Skeptico website on the Skeptico forum. Anyway, you do it as fine with me as long as you let me know what you think. That's gonna do it for this episode of Skeptico. I have a number of, I think, good shows coming up. Please stay with me for all of that. Until next time, take care and bye for now. So thanks for watching this video and if it wasn't really a video but just an audio, stored as a video, I apologize. But there's more videos out there as well but please check out the Skeptico website. You can see it here. We cover a lot of different stuff you might be interested in relating to controversial science and spirituality. A lot of shows up there, over 350 of them or so. All free, all available for download. So do check it out.