Hacking the Afterlife with Jennifer Shaffer, Luana, Henry Jaglom, Orson, Peter, Sally, Dennis, Carl

This is an unusual version of the podcast. An old friend passed, someone I've known for 40 years, someone who was friends with our moderator Luana Anders on the Flipside, and by his own estimate was friends with 80% of our class on the flipside.

Henry Jaglom was a Hollywood icon, known by everyone, knew everyone, used to hold the most attended New Year's Eve parties where I got to meet the cast of the Sopranos, met Ang Lee, Oscar winning actors, directors - Peter Bogdanovich, would run into my friend Carl Weathers and Sally Kellerman and her husband Jonathan Krane.

It was always fun - and Orson was a born raconteur.

He also didn't believe in the afterlife at all. He was adamant about it - and if the topic came up, would squint at me, wrinkle his brow, shake his head - just the way Luana's pal BJ Merholz does when the topic comes up.

All I can say is Harry Dean Stanton was the King of Skeptics - and when we spoke to him on a number of occasions (and he proved beyond a shadow of doubt he still existed by giving me private health messages to friends of his at his memorial - who were flabbergasted to hear what Harry had to tell them as only he could have known those intimate details from the Afterlife..

Harry told us to tell people to "believe in the possibility of an afterlife so they don't waste another minute of their lives arguing about it like I did."

As noted in the podcast, Jennifer was able to squeeze me in today when I told her a friend had passed, without telling her anything about it, and his friends had already reached out to me to ask some questions.

So sincere best wishes to his family, to his kids, to his exwives, to all those who loved him and think this is an unusual way to pay our respects.  

Yes, I know that Orson Welles was upset that he caught Henry secretly taping him - I heard it from Orson's secretary at a party at Henry's house. She whispered to me that Orson felt so betrayed, "He never left his home again."

I didn't have to tell Jennifer who I was asking about - she could see them.  And to be clear - Jennifer is not a movie fan, she spends much of her day on criminal cases helping out various law enforcement agencies pro bono - I've interviewed some of those agents or detectives.

She is interpreting what she gets - like when I asked her on BJ Merholz behalf - "who introduced him to Henry?"  I thought it might be their mutual pal Jack Nicholson - but Jennifer got that it was a woman - and wasn't Luana (even though that makes sense) but really couldn't pin down who it was.  Why?  Who cares?

She was aware of Bert Schneider without knowing who he was (or how his first name is spelled) and how he "left the planet too early."  (How could she know?)  Or that Dennis was Dennis Hopper, or that Orson was Orson Welles - she knew nothing, zero, zippo about Henry Jaglom and most people who knew Henry didn't know that much about him anyways. 

Finally it wasn't until I was listening to the podcast when I realize why Carl Weathers and Sally Kellerman were teasing him about "being in our class."  I realized that they were referring to the fact that he was adamant about life going on - and I suspect those who knew this about Henry will continue to believe that is the case - but in doing this work with Jennifer EVERY WEEK for the past ten years, I can report we've had many skeptics, curmudgeons show up to talk to us about how surprised, gob smacked, shocked they were to realize that life goes on.

Life goes on.

Get over it.

Thanks for tuning in.