Hacking the Afterlife with Jennifer Shaffer, Luana Anders, Amelia Earhart, Harry Dean Stanton, Gene Hackman

Another unusual podcast.

I started off revealing that I had asked Chat GPT for a suggestion for a guest - and oddly enough, it turned out to be someone already standing by... Amelia Earhart.

Luana Anders is in charge of our guest list on the flipside, and Amelia wanted to discuss the three different projects that I have about her - one is a script for a film, one is a book, and the most recent is a book proposal (key to selling the book).

I was working on it yesterday, so it was prescient to discuss it.  She wanted to suggest I be more "wild" with it.  I'll have to think that one over a bit. But good advice. 

Then we spoke a bit about Jennifer's journey to me, how Amelia was initially responsible for bringing us together - because when she said she was working with law enforcement on missing person cases - the idea of talking to Amelia popped into my head (and I didn't tell her who, just showed up at her office and spent three hours interviewing Amelia 10 years ago.

Funny for her to put it this way.

Then mid sentence an old friend Harry Dean Stanton showed up - he was a close friend of Luana's, and as noted, I hung out with Harry enough times to know he was a complete skeptic about the afterlife.

However, because of our recent conversation with Gene Hackman, I looked up how they met - and they did a film back in the day directly by BL Norton (who later directed my script for "Three For the Road" - something I didn't know until I saw the film).

Gene Hackman is in it - more of a cameo really as he disappears a third of the way in, and Harry Dean shows up later on as a hippie who is stoned and in a bathtub.

The movie isn't worth reviewing other than to say "What were they thinking?" 

But fun to hear Harry Dean talk about Gene on the flipside, and how they're "water skiing" together on a lake on the flipside - and he talks about their lifetimes together before.

Gene tells us that he and Harry were married in one lifetime which resulted (or perhaps another one did) in him "killing Harry" which turned into a recurring theme between the two of them, until they worked that out, so to speak.

Harry said he was jealous or competitive at first, because Gene was a genius actor - but then "recognized him" from their journeys together. (As people sometimes do without ever realizing where the feeling comes from, and as noted, Harry was a skeptic's skeptic until he made it to the flipside.

As noted, there's a scene in the film HACKING THE AFTERLIFE on Amazon Prime or Gaia where Jennifer first access Harry Dean - and he tells us to "tell people to believe in the possibility of a lifetime so they don't waste another minute arguing about it like I did." 

Wise words.

Another mind bending episode.