Interview w/ Dr. Gary Simonds - Neurosurgeon and Author

Dr. Gary Simonds is a highly experienced neurosurgeon, former head of an academic neurosurgery program at Virginia Tech/Carilion Clinic. He is a Professor, and teaches regularly at, the Virginia Tech School of Neuroscience and the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine.He was a biochemistry major at Dartmouth College. He went on to medical school at Rutgers and Neurosurgery residency and medical research fellowship at Walter Reed. He also holds a master’s degree in Health Care Delivery Science from Dartmouth. Gary has written and spoken widely on the subjects of neuroscience, medical school admissions, humanism, medical socioeconomics, medical ethics, burnout, personal wellness, spirituality, death and dying, and the interface between science and religion. He's also the author of the book 'Death's Pale Flag', which combines neurosurgery and the paranormal. In this episode we discuss his book and also talk about the paranormal, sleep paralysis, near death expierences, and so much more.

You can pick up a copy of his book 'Death's Pale Flag' anywhere. -- https://www.amazon.com/Deaths-Pale-Flag-Gary-Simonds/dp/B003R3111Ehttps://www.amazon.com/Deaths-Pale-Flag-Gary-Simonds/dp/B003R3111E

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/mysterious-circumstances--5479817/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Hey, everybody, Welcome to Mysterious Circumstances podcast. I have a
very very special guest on with me right now. And
this is something that I don't normally do. I mean
I do, but I don't. I got hit up in
an email and it's like, hey, you know, we're doing
some interviews with some authors and I saw this book
and I was like, I want to talk to that

(00:36):
guy because I am super, super curious. I'm here with
Gary Simmons. He wrote a book called Desk Pale Flag,
and why I found it so interesting is because it
combines neuroscience with the paranormal. Gary, you can tell is
highly educated. If you read the episode description, you can

(00:57):
see all of his accolades and education in his books,
and there's also a link to his book in there
as well. So Gary, welcome, Welcome to the show. How
are you today, man.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
I'm great, and thank you so much for having me.
I am honored.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
All right, I'm very happy to have you on. I
guess let's get started with some of your background. What
got you interested in in neuroscience in the first place
and being a neurosurgeon.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Oh geez, we're really digging back now, you know you
go through when you're in medical school, you go through
all sorts of incarnations of what you're going to be,
and I went through a whole bunch. I started, I think,
with I was going to be a family doc, and
then I was going to be a cancer doc, and

(01:44):
then I was going to be a general surgeon. Then
I was going to be a cardiothoracic surgeon. And that's
kind of where I was set to go into training.
You know, you do your residency training after medical school,
and so I had a residency all set up, and
I was prepared to kind of go down the tracks
of cardiothoracic surgeon. When my last month in medical school,

(02:10):
literally the last month, I saw my first brain operation,
and I literally kind of stood there in awe and went,
oh my god, I've got to do that. And I
mean I had to kind of switch engines in you know,
mid in mid track and run around the country trying

(02:31):
to find a place that would train me. And but
it was it was one of those truly, it was
one of those I guess epiphanies where you're like, I
can't I can't imagine doing anything else now. And so
I always tell people I'm better lucky than smart because
I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

(02:53):
And yet looking back on it all, I can't imagine
doing anything different. So I lucked out. But it wasn't
well researched.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
So going on that, what made you decide to start
writing books? And I know you had published some stuff
for educational purposes and stuff like that as well, But
what started you on the path of just you know what,
I got this really great story in my head. I
need to get it out on paper.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
Yeah, I think, you know, at one level in medicine,
you're always writing. You're always writing stuff. You know, you
have to write about your patients, you do their histories,
and you have to write about what you're thinking. So
it's very I mean, you write a hell of a lot.
It's just, you know, mostly all straightforward. This patient has,

(03:42):
this is what I think is what we're going to do,
that sort of things. But you know, in that world,
you see so much stuff we were talking about the
pod about you know, some of the horrible stuff you
see in life and some of the good stuff you
see in life. But you see a lot, you see
great depravity. You do see a horrendous tragedy and suffering.

(04:05):
You see amazing bravery and grace. So you're seeing all
this stuff in the background. I mean, it's going on
all the time around you, but we're not writing about it.
We're just writing this patient has this, that, and this.
I found myself wanting to get it down somewhere, and
so I would just scribble notes periodically, and I had

(04:26):
pieces of paper all over the house with just notes
on some of the stuff I had experienced day to day.
I felt like, at some point, at some point, if
I got a chance, I would like to at least
shine a light on that world, on all its complexities,
and let people really experience it for themselves. So, yeah,

(04:49):
I had written three books before on burnout and building
resilience in healthcare workers, but again it was very straightforward
and had not wandered into the fictional world. But I
started thinking, you know, if I really want to give
people a good glimpse into that world, into the world
I was inhabiting, I bet you it would be much

(05:12):
more immersive entertaining. Maybe to do it in some sort
of fictional story and literally kind of try to put
the scalpel in the reader's hand let the reader look
at the bleeding brain and try to figure out what
the heck to do about it. And that's how I
kind of got sucked into trying fiction.

Speaker 3 (05:34):
That is awesome.

Speaker 1 (05:36):
So going on that, what was the basis or the
idea that spawned does pale flag?

Speaker 2 (05:43):
Well, it goes back to me wanting to pull the
curtain back and let people see my world. But again
that I really wanted to do it in a fictional setting.
So initially, initially the story was and you got a

(06:04):
whole lot got written and then got grown in the trashy.
But originally, originally the the it was a brain surgeon again,
but he had discovered, really it discovered a plot to
knock off lead politicians and Supreme Court justices in the
country through giving them aneurysms. And the neurosurgeon kind of

(06:29):
figures it out, or at least has an inkling of
it as time goes on, and of course he meets
a beautiful FBI agent and there's a romance on the side.
And anyway, it was trash and I uh, and I
tossed it. But I had been immersed in the supernatural world,

(06:52):
the paranormal world, the world of ghosts for sure, by
my mother and grandmother growing up. They were both off
the boat from Scotland. And I always say that I guess,
I just I think people understand when you deal with Brits,
there's a much higher chance that they're they're pretty welcoming

(07:13):
or believing in things paranormal and supernatural, and so maybe
that explains it. I don't know, but they they were
very much certain that a different world exists, that a
spirit world exists, and both had multiple experiences with various
types of ghosts and spirits and that sort of thing.

(07:36):
And so, I mean, in my childhood it was just
you just accepted the fact that that sort of thing
was happening. Now my dad was on the complete polar
opposite and would shoot at it, you know, and shoot
it down any chance he had and make fun of it.
But you know, it was there, and ghost stories and
ghost books and ghost movies were there am I growing up.

(07:59):
And I guess when the kind of Secret Agent or
FBI story went in the trash heep, I was thinking, well,
how else can I set up a fictional story? And
I started thinking about just how much even you know,
in my career, and how much I was around death
and death and dying and people, and in the book,

(08:22):
I kind of talk about how it's almost like there's
a bridge that people have to cross to go from
the living to the dead, and we in my business
are always trying to grab somebody as they're trying to
cross the bridge and pull them back, if you will.
And I started thinking, well, geez, you know, if there
is a spirit world that wants to interact with the

(08:43):
world of the living, maybe people who hang around that
bridge a lot would be their first opportunity, first target,
if you will. So maybe you know, a neurosurgeon who's
there trying to pull people back from the bridge might
be choice target it for the spirit world to try
to connect with. And that's where the story started popping

(09:05):
up in my head and from there it almost became
easy from that point on because it made it made
some sense to me at.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
Least absolutely no. I couldn't agree more. And like we
were talking before recording, that's what I found so fascinating
because I'm a logical guy, but I'm also into the paranormal,
so it's always interesting to see work done that is
associated with some type of brain activity. That's why I
really enjoy when people do the st As method doing

(09:34):
paranormal investigations, because it's just total sensory deprivation and then
you're just your other senses are kicking. That drew me
in quite a bit. I can see how the book
would have been easy for you to write because you're
interested in the paranormal as well, but also because of
your education, you had that perfect fit. But did you

(09:57):
ever have experiences growing up or did you incorporate anything
like that end of the book.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
I personally would love, would love to have some experiences
that are definitive and I know it's happening, but I
would be lying to say, yes, I personally experienced this
ghost or that coast, although I guess for the sake
of the book, I probably should say I have, but
I you know, it just it just is not true. Now.

(10:27):
My mother, on the other hand, you know, I mean,
just full of stories and there you know, some are
pretty chilling, and she just seemed to be one of
these people who if there are people who are better receivers,
if you will, it would seem to be someone like her.
Where we would be in a in a old and

(10:47):
I lived in England for a few years when I
was a kid, will you be in some building or home,
and she would say I don't like this. I don't
like this room, or I don't like you know, I
don't like this whole bi anyway, you would find out
that whatever was bothering her, somebody had been murdered in
or that I can vividly remember being in this, you know,

(11:12):
old mansion and we walked into one room and she said,
it's freezing in this room. And everybody's saying, well, no,
it feels like all the rest of the place. She goes, no,
it's this. This is really a freezing cold room. And
we later found that someone had been walled alive in

(11:32):
that room, and you know, stuff like that. It's just
one thing after another through the years. So where there's
any of the specific ghost stories that I created in there, No,
I stole. I stole kind of a one from one
of my brothers in law who was in Vietnam and

(11:55):
he kept having a recurring nightmare after coming out of Vietnam,
and I did steal a little bit of his story
for that. But so no, not specifically my own experiences,
but kind of morphing some of my mom's stories and
other stories I've read through.

Speaker 3 (12:12):
Time, that's outstanding.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
So when it goes back to the logical explanations for
some of the stuff that people sense or see, what
is your some of your personal theories on how the
brain activity is going, like what's happening in somebody's brain,
what's firing off? Because I know you probably I know
you got to have some because you know of your

(12:36):
profession and your background. So what are some of those
theories when when you try to introduce the logical aspect of.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
It, Well, that's it's a great question. That's what became
I think most fun for me in some ways. And
hopefully you know, hopefully I'm teasing the readers with the
same sort of question and conceptualization because you know, you
on one side, you can explain almost anything we experience

(13:09):
by the brain. Just as you were talking about, put
somebody in a sensory deprivation chamber and all sorts of
things start coming out of the brain. But we know,
you know, the brain can the brain can generate for
us virtually any experience. And I think the easiest way
to recognize that is just think about some of your dreams.
I mean, some dreams can be remarkably vivid and realistic,

(13:31):
and other dreams. You can see almost anything. Trees can dance,
you know, houses can move, and pure wet and stuff
like that. And so you know, neurologically, the firing of
the brain, the way the brain creates images anyway, it's
certainly plausible for it to create everything that the main

(13:53):
protagonist in the book experienced. You know that what I
tried to do is give legitimate ways that it could
be happening in him, were it truly just based on
his neurologic system, and so you know, he was very
sleep deprived, had history of sleep disorders, where you know,

(14:15):
sleep was already interrupting his waking life. And I was
kind of trying to make it so that you could
explain it all by just his nervous system. But what
was fun for me is to flip it the other
way and say, Okay, is it his nervous system that's
going a little haywire and doing this, or is he

(14:37):
truly experiencing ghosts? And if he's truly experiencing ghosts for
what reason and what are they after? And what impact
is it having on him? And how would somebody who
is immersed in science react to actually coming to a
conclusion that, oh, my gosh, this is not a misfire,

(14:58):
this this is real. And so that was fun. It
was a lot of fun to play with.

Speaker 3 (15:04):
That is outstanding.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
And I love how you a little bit ago were
saying how you partly grew up for a few years
over in Europe. You're very right about the fact that
they are way more open to this kind of thing,
And I think part of that is just because they're
just way older in general, older of countries, older cultures,
They had a lot more stuff going on before any

(15:26):
of us did over here in America. But at the
same time, it's just fascinating the way that people think.
And I a lot of times because my mom is
huge into the paranormal, my dad.

Speaker 3 (15:39):
Not so much.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
And my mom is always saying the same things that
yours did.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
You know.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
It's like I just I don't like this, or you know,
something will happen here, something will happen there. And my
dad is just the complete opposite, blue collar, go to work,
what you know, it's all in your head. I think
it's fascinating too that the environment, I think shapes a
lot of people's opinions on a lot of things, obviously

(16:05):
that whole relativism factor. So I'm happy that you wrote
the book the way you did because you break down
somebody who has this background but starts experiencing things, and
like we were saying earlier, there are some things, a
lot of things you know, that we just don't understand

(16:25):
or explain when you started getting into your profession and everything,
what was one of the biggest shock factors, Like after
your whole education and you're out here in the job field.
I don't want to say people's experiences or just what

(16:45):
was going on in their head, but I guess what
was just the biggest shock factor that you learned doing
the job that you do or through the course of
your education.

Speaker 2 (16:57):
It probably never boils down the to one thing only,
but I will say, you know, if you want to
get into the supernatural side of it, and it's not
truly supernatural, but I'm going to call it that. But
one of the things that shocked me and continued to
shock me throughout my entire career was the unbelievable kind

(17:24):
of bravery and grace of almost every patient I ever
took care of and their families. And I took care
of horribly ill patient one after another after another, and
many who knew they were dying, and then many who
were in coma already and their families were having to

(17:44):
deal with these horrible things. And it is stunning, how,
as I said, brave and full of grace everybody always
was it. Really, you know, we live in a time
right now where we feel like we're at each other's
throat politically and all that sort of thing, and you

(18:06):
forget just how wonderful most people are, and how when
faced with some of the worst circumstances of their lives,
how they can kind of raise well above just our
normal functioning and and function at just a whole much
more elevated level of humanity. So that was always remarkably

(18:31):
inspirational and never ceased to amaze me. It was very inspiring.
It kept you working hard to do your best for
them and all. So it's not truly supernatural, but boy,
it's you know, it's beyond my experience in the normal
world where people can kind of get petty and snooty
and arkie and all that sort of thing, and then

(18:53):
then these people are thrust into the worst situations of
their lives and they and they just duck themselves in
a way that you can't imagine. You know, you put
me in those circumstances, I think I'd be throwing chairs
into the windows and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (19:11):
Yeah, I'd be right there with you too.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
I don't There's certain situations where I've had friends or
family that they've gone through those situations, and I always say, oh,
you know, you handled it really well, because in the
back of my mind, it's like I would have I
would have totally lost it. You know, I don't even
want to know what would happened going on when you
said coma, though, I am curious. I've had a couple friends.

(19:34):
I have one friend who she was in a coma
for like two months, and when she woke up, she
said it was like a dream. But I also know
somebody else who was in a coma and I think
there is only like a couple of weeks, but they
said it was just black. I guess I'm really curious
to ask you what what is going on when you're
in a coma and what do you think is making

(19:57):
people have different experiences with that.

Speaker 2 (20:01):
I think one of the easiest ways let's go, let's
just go purely scientific on it because we can flip.
We can flip to the other side as well. But
starting with the scientific side of it, the easiest way
to see it is that coma is not black and white,
meaning you know this is all coma is one thing.

(20:23):
It's we turn the lights completely off and you're out
of it. Rather than that coma is a is a
spectrum of neurological function. And for us, our main determinant
as to whether you were in coma or not was
whether you could follow commands, meaning we would say, mister Jones,

(20:47):
show me two fingers. And if they could show you
two fingers, even if they weren't talking, even if they
weren't opening their eyes, what that told us is the
stuff got in, they processed it, and then they acted
upon it, and to us that signified consciousness, if you will.
And so you could have somebody just below that level

(21:09):
where they're still moving about. They may even be opening
their eyes, some groaning some, or you could be totally
on the other end of the spectrum where they are
out even you know, you get anyeg and nothing's going
on in there. So from a scientific level, it is
perfectly understandable that people are going to have different experiences

(21:33):
when they're in quote coma, because some may be in
a deeper coma than others, some may be just you know,
literally one step away from death. Now, of course you
get the near death stories as well, or the people
who have died and come back, and there's there actually
was just a rush of reports recently of EEG recordings

(21:54):
when people's heart stopped and they were saying, oh, we
got this burst of gamma activity or whatever. And these
were the scientists trying to explain these these experiences of
people coming out of there going oh, well, I passed
before my eyes or I went you know, down a
brake tunnel, or well, you know, all a lot of

(22:15):
these stories, and the scientists, of course want an explanation,
and they want to be able to say, oh, it's
because of this now if you flip this all to
the other side, because I think, you know, I mean,
it's one of the great mysteries of life, right, it's
one of the great things that probably we all ask ourselves,

(22:35):
and at least, you know, I try to keep a
very open mind about it, and that is, is there
more than just these nerve cells firing on one another
and releasing chemicals and all that sort of stuff. Do
we have a soul? Is there us in there that
isn't just the nerves communicating with one another? And so

(22:59):
you know, that opens a whole different line of how
much of our soul needs to have the wiring working
or is commanding the wiring? Who knows but it You know,
it's one of the great questions. And again it's I
guess it's something that I like playing with because I
don't know. I have no freaking clue. I sometimes am

(23:23):
amazed at my own colleagues, if you will, the neuroscience world,
who want to be so sure. They want to just say, Nope,
it doesn't exist. It's all neurochemical, it's all this, it's
all that, and after life can't exist. You know, we
have proof, And I'm like, we have proof, what birth

(23:44):
do we have? So you know, I I kind of
I was just talking to somebody today, but I kind
of find feel like whenever somebody is absolutely certain about
what goes on beyond life, for example, I immediately go,
I think you're kind of creating your own little religion

(24:08):
there as opposed to kind of keeping an open mind.
So a long winded answer to your great question, but
it really keys into something that fascinates me, and I'm
hoping that that fascinates people with the book. You know,
is to think about, Yeah, is this all just a

(24:29):
brain or are we more than that? No.

Speaker 1 (24:32):
I love that answer because I was going to get
into the near death experiences soon after.

Speaker 3 (24:37):
And you are very open minded.

Speaker 1 (24:40):
And that's what I love about this because I could
one hundred percent see most people in your profession being like, Nope,
here's what it is.

Speaker 3 (24:49):
This has to be it.

Speaker 1 (24:51):
And I always tell people, say, I go to a
haunted location and you might experience something you might not
you know it's or you might hear something on a recording.
It might be whatever you're perceiving it to say, it
might actually be clear.

Speaker 3 (25:06):
You never know.

Speaker 1 (25:07):
But when I go to these places, and sometimes I
do live shows, then I'll present a crime case, but
then I'll present a paranormal case. And you can always
tell the people who are there for the crime because
they're like, oh, there's some guy in the basement, you know,
banging on the pipes, and it's like, okay, go prove it.
Because the burden of proof lies both ways. And that's

(25:28):
why I always try to tell people so With that
being said, there was a book that I read a long,
long time ago, and this guy went around and researched
near death experiences. And what he did was he spent
five or six years traveling all over the world interviewing
all these people who had MDes. And the one thing

(25:48):
that I found fascinating and that he found fascinating was
everybody's who was a religious person, no matter the religion.
He said that everybody's near death experienceiences was relevant to
the religion that they practiced or didn't practice or whatever.
And I found that extremely fascinating because that goes back

(26:10):
to the brain and what we believe and what's ingrained
in there. So have you heard any stories, like in
your profession, where people come back and they're like, Hey,
this happened or anything like that, and then what is
your personal theory on that?

Speaker 2 (26:29):
I will say that that's a I got to kind
of work my way around that one a little bit.
Are into it a little bit. Just to go back
to one of the things that you were saying, though,
is I keep going back to this idea that science
is a great thing and we owe so much to it.

(26:52):
You and I are probably alive because of science and
biomedical you know, miracles that we have of vaccine and
antibiotics and all that sort of stuff. But you know,
science's job is to question things. I think the mistake
we sometimes make is science in science is to believe

(27:13):
that our job is to create answers. I think our
job is more to ask questions yes, and try to
maybe toss out certain things that clearly aren't the situation.
But I don't think it's really to come up with
the absolute explanation of everything. I think we just try

(27:34):
to approximate, you know, what's going on out there. I
also try to always bear in mind that the brain
is a very imperfect piece of machinery in that it's
not showing us everything. It is very selective in what
it shows us. Like I can't see in for red,
I can't see ultraviolet. You know, birds can fly through

(27:56):
a you know, a forest and dodge every tree. You
know that my brain can't do that. So we're already
starting with imperfect machinery, if you will. And therefore I
think it takes so much kind of hubris to say, oh,
we can explain everything, and everything has an answer. Now

(28:21):
that kind of goes away from your question. But I
just want to I still want to put that stake
in the ground that I think it's very wise to
keep an open mind about everything when we see these things.
And I was again, I was talking to a friend today,
but I was saying, you know, when whenever you read
astrophysicists stuff, and I'm no astrophysicists, so you know, I

(28:45):
can't get very deep into it. But when they start
getting deep into you know, explaining the way the universe
works and then theorizing that there could be other universes
and blah blah blah, I'm just like, wow. I mean,
this feels you're taking that big leap of faith too,
where faith is something that you know, you're believing in
something you can't explain or you can't prove. I think

(29:07):
they take that leap of faith as well. And so
again I just think it's it's always there that we're
we want explanations and we don't. With science. We kind
of think, oh, well, we're giving the answers, but I
think we're just asking more and more questions. Anyway, to
go back to the near death experiences, I would tell

(29:30):
you that unfortunately most of our patients, you know that
I had to deal with, we're badly head injured or
something like that. So now you're already throwing you know,
damage into the machinery. Whereas I think, I bet you
a lot of these near death experience reports do come
from people where it's like their heart stops for a

(29:52):
while or whatever. But and I remember that book that
you're referring to as well. But every once in a while, yeah,
you would have a patient who would tell you about
strange things that were happening while they while they were
down and out one way or the other. And you know,
the deep coma patients too, as you were remarking, would

(30:15):
sometimes talk about being out of their body and you know,
looking down at what everybody was doing. And they could
freak you out a little bit sometimes and tell you,
you know that they saw this or heard this, and
you're like, oh, geez, I wonder how that got in there.
But it wasn't all that common for us, and I

(30:36):
think it probably is much more common where it's a
cardiac problem and the brain is the brain hasn't gone
through a windshield or you know, been hit by a
bullet or something like that.

Speaker 1 (30:50):
Yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. How long is the
brain active after death.

Speaker 2 (30:56):
Well, there's the there's another question to most of the
ways that you look at brain activity are very oh,
what's the word I would use insensitive in that most
times when you're looking at brain activity, you have it's
in the EEG and you have electrodes that you glue

(31:20):
to the scalp and it's trying to pick up little signals,
you know, down from deep in the brain. But all
those signals they have to get through fluid that's around
the brain, aligning that's around the brain, the skull, the scalp.
It's got to get a long way, you know, to
even get to those electrodes. Now, sometimes you have electrodes

(31:41):
in the brain itself, and like I said, there's been
a rush of these stories recently of electrodes being in
the brain while somebody has gone through death and they're showing,
you know, bursts of activities, and everybody's all excited about
that because they think they can explain everything through that,
which I don't think they can. So usually it only

(32:02):
lasts at most for a couple of minutes. But again,
you think about dreams, and you could be you know,
dreams aren't necessarily in real time it could feel like
a long long time and you may be only dreaming
for a few minutes or something like that. So who knows.
You know, time is I think probably pretty elastic in

(32:22):
the neurological world. But we also know that you know,
you deprived the brain of oxygen and it starts to die.
The cells start to die within minutes, so you're not
going to have you know, if there's a true heart stop,
nothing's getting to the brain. It's not going to be
going for a long time. It's only going to be

(32:44):
going for a few minutes.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
That's interesting that you brought up the concept of time though,
because that was another thing I was always curious about,
is the concept of time while dreaming a lot of
time too. It's so weird, like I'll be having a
dream and during the dream I'll hear there'll be a
noise right when my alarm goes off, and it's like, okay,

(33:12):
did the alarm go off first? And then the concept
of time and my brain just click and then kind
of do a little reversal there or what. But I'm
glad you brought that up. That was that was interesting.
I don't know, I don't understand the concept of time.
I guess in dreaming compared to real life. You know,
it could be two hours while you're sleeping or in

(33:35):
the dream, and then in reality it was like ten minutes.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah. I mean, I've certainly had dreams where it goes
on and on and on and on, and I you know,
it feels like over days or more, and you know,
you know you've only been out for a little while.
So yeah, I definitely think. You know, we we pace
a recognition of time when we're old, because we have

(34:01):
all sorts of cues. We know how the day unfolds,
we know what the sun is doing, you know, all
that sort of thing, and so I think our brains
can kind of pace time out relatively well. But I
think I bet you all constraints are off once we
get a sleep. I'm no expert in that either. I'm
just thinking out loud. I think that whole time thing

(34:22):
is interesting too. You know, I wrote a piece and
it was just a silly thinking about the way the
world goes and how life goes or death goes. But
it was about, you know, a guy who talks to
God at the end of his life. He's dead and
he gets an exit interview if you will, and he's

(34:43):
talking about, you know, all the human suffering that goes
on and why would you allow us to suffer so much?
And one of the responses is, well, you know, you're
measuring it by your time on earth, which seems like
a long time, but if you measure that against time
of existence, you know, it becomes nothing. It becomes the

(35:03):
blink of an eye. So you know, I think time
is interesting to play with as well as a concept.

Speaker 3 (35:10):
It certainly is.

Speaker 1 (35:11):
It certainly is, like I took, I don't know, I
think a lot of it too. Is like I get
into sleep studies like not per I have no problem sleeping,
but I like seeing other people's experiences because like Salvador Dolly,
he used to hold a spoon over a bowl and
as soon as he would fall asleep, he would drop

(35:34):
that spoon and that's when he would immediately wake up
and do one of his paintings, and he would base
it on whatever he saw, like right before he hit
that ram or whatever his deal was. And I always
found that really fascinating, just when you're on the brink
of sleeping, what your brain is going through compared to

(35:55):
you know, a twenty minute nap or something like that.

Speaker 2 (35:59):
Yeah, the I've never heard that story, so that's really fascinating.
But you're right. I so there is sleep pathology in
this book for sure, And that got in there because
I had it myself and then my son's A couple
of my sons have had a version of sleep pathige.
So I had I had something called night pirs, and

(36:19):
my son's had sleep paralysis where you you know, you
wake up and you can't move and you feel like
usually there's an evil presence in the room and you
and you can't move and it's terrifying and you have
to kind of tell yourself, well, try to move a
pinky at least, and you know, break your way out

(36:40):
of out of that sleep paralysis. But I know with
my when I was having that stuff, You're right, it
was just as I was falling asleep, I could, you know,
sometimes you could feel dreams just like accelerate. They just
kind of burst in at that at that moment. So, yeah,

(37:01):
it's a dreaming and sleep is fascinating, and talk about
something that science has really not got worked out well
at all. Yeah. I was talking to a neuroscientist friend
of mine a month or two ago about that just
saying why are we so far behind in that and
not really you know, not really getting deep into it,

(37:23):
but it is fascinating.

Speaker 1 (37:25):
That's why I always liked the Tesla quote. I can't
remember exactly how it went, but he says, when we
start looking at and trying to figure out more non
physical things, He's like, we'll make more progress in ten
years than we have in ten lifetimes. And it's like
I always found that pretty fascinating, especially coming from Tesla. Yeah, yeah,

(37:46):
but yeah, I was gonna I was gonna ask you
about the whole sleep paralysis thing as well, And obviously
you have I know somebody who she would just constantly
talk about it, but when she would be in sleep paralysis,
she would claim to see shadow figures.

Speaker 3 (38:04):
Yes, and all of that.

Speaker 1 (38:06):
Now, my whole thing is, there was a study that
was done in Switzerland, I believe, and these doctors got
this girl and sleep deprived her and hooked her up
to all this stuff and they actually created in her
brain a shadow figure.

Speaker 3 (38:25):
I believe.

Speaker 1 (38:26):
The PDFs for the study are all still online and
available for free. But I always found that super fascinating
because I did an episode on shadow people, and I
know sleep deprivation plays a huge factor because you have,
unfortunately I had to use as an example, some people
who you know, do harder drugs who don't sleep for

(38:46):
a few days, you know, they go through that. But
those people aside, you have people all around the world
for a couple hundred years who have all described basically
the same thing. And I did know if that will
be a common thing in everybody's brain or if it
might be something more than that, I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
Yeah, it's hard to say there when when people have
you know, the bonafide sleep paralysis, that shadowy figures or
frightening figures are very common. But again, we can, you know,
we can play with that. And when I say play
with it, I don't mean, you know, just be frivolous.
I mean, you know, it's it's fun to think about

(39:31):
when you again mix the spiritual with the uh with
the scientific world. But I was thinking about earlier when
you were talking about the people of Europe and Britain,
and culturally they're much more accepting, They're much less likely
than like my dad, who would just say it's just bs,
why are we why are we wasting a minute on this?

(39:53):
But you know, you tell somebody like in the book,
you know, the guy is the guy's wife is really
upset with them, and he's worried that, you know, if
I'm truly seeing things, or if I'm seeing things, should
I be you know, taken out of work. And in
Europe say you know, I've been seeing ghosts. They're like, oh, yeah,
well that's cool. I wish I did too, you know,

(40:16):
But I was thinking as you're talking about that, and again,
if you wanted to play that science versus spirituality, maybe
you could make an argument about just how sensitive is
somebody to things that are are not clearly being experienced
by everybody. So like we were saying, my mom, you know,

(40:39):
if you were to believe her, she's pretty sensitive to
you know, what goes on and haunted houses and stuff,
and there are some stories that can curl your toes
on it. And I have to say, you know, you
were asking have I had a true experience, and I
haven't had anything over but you know, every once in

(40:59):
a while we'll visit a place like Gettysburg. I don't
know if you've ever been to Gettysburg. And I get
weird feelings when I'm standing there, you know, on the
field of pickets charge or at little Round Top and
you know, is that just because I love history so
much and you read that stuff a million times. I

(41:21):
had a similar feeling on Omaha Beach or is are
you you know, are you picking up something? And if
you were more sensitive, would you pick up even more,
you know, more of that something? So anyway, you you know,
it's interesting at least to challenge yourself with that. Even
if you want to take the pure scientific and just

(41:43):
explain it all away, I think it's fun to look
on the other side of that. The other thing I
tried to do with the book, for example, was ask
the reader to think about, well, okay, let's say, let's
say that the paranormal is real, let's say the ghosts
are real. What in this? What is actually more frightening
in this? Is it the paranormal or is it the

(42:04):
normal stuff that the protagonist is seeing every day there
in the trauma base and hearing all the stories that
the patients have gone through. That was another another thing
that I kind of wanted to have people consider.

Speaker 1 (42:21):
Yeah, and you actually just answered one of my questions
I was going to ask, is I know you didn't
have any experiences but I was going to ask if
there was any places that you've that you've gone to
that you could just you know, felt a little bit
differently and you know, maybe displaced energy or whatever.

Speaker 3 (42:38):
It might be.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
I mean, obviously we don't know, but Gettysburg would probably
be a huge one because I'm a huge history guy too,
and my dad's been to Gettysburg a few times and
I personally have not been there yet.

Speaker 3 (42:52):
I plan on going.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
Probably early earlier next year in the spring and stuff,
because I want to make.

Speaker 3 (42:58):
It like a whole week of it.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
I don't just want to go for a few days
because there's just too many things there and it's the
historical significance is amazing. But I also am probably going
to do the ghost tours. Gotta, I gotta do all
that stuff. But yeah, I could see if there's if
there's anywhere that's on it, I mean, Kettysburg. Oh man,

(43:20):
just a crazy non American listeners. I've talked about stuff
like that before and they always find the wild West fascinating.
I come to find that out a lot of my
friends from England and Australia always find the wild West
just so fascinating.

Speaker 2 (43:34):
And I wonder why we're not wearing spurs.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
I know, And I've done episodes on like Billy the
Kid and you know, White Urb and Doc Holliday and
stuff like that. In those episodes, there's nothing real mysterious
about it. Well, some of them are, actually because I
like to find out if the if the stories are true,
try to lock them down with more than one source,
whether it be newspaper preferably not word of my mouth.

(44:00):
But if you have six people who were there, it's
also the same thing. I tried to take that as
as fact. But I just get into history and people
like that slaves, it's like what made them larger than life?
And it seems like Gettysburg is just an entire place
that's larger than life. For people outside of America, it's
hard for them to conceive what happened during the Civil

(44:23):
War and how many people died and then the whole
thing at Gettysburg and other battlefields. And I tell people,
I'm like, you can go to old battlefields and I say,
you take a metal detector out there. You know you're
gonna you're gonna find stuff. And you live in an
area that's probably pretty rich in civil or history as well.

Speaker 2 (44:41):
I would imagine I'm not not as much now I live.
I live in the mountains of North Carolina. But even
when we were in Roanoke there we were just a
little ways away from the you know, the big Shenandoah
Valley campaign area, but it was all easy striking distance.
We were also in d C for quite a while,

(45:02):
and I mean the easiest pie to get at quite
a few battlefields and Antietam and stuff like that. For
whatever reason, Gettysburg was when that you know, again, every
time I've been there, I've been there several times, I
do feel something. What is it? I don't know what's
the closest you've come, or how what's the most you've felt?

Speaker 3 (45:27):
Oh man, I felt a lot.

Speaker 1 (45:29):
So I went and stayed at a place back in
twenty nineteen called the Sally House, and it's supposedly a
renowned haunted location. This is the context because when I
uploaded an episode a couple of months ago, or actually
a few months ago now, and it's all it's titled

(45:51):
is My Night at the Indiana State Sanatorium. And historically speaking,
the Indiana State was a TV hospital for a super
long time. After that, it was an assisted living facility
for old people. And back then, let's say if you
were a single parent and you got TV, then unfortunately

(46:12):
your kid had to go live at the hospital with you.
So they had a little wing for people's kids, and
then they would end up getting tuberculosis and then they
would die too. So just hundreds of death over the
course of you know, sixty seventy eighty years. So that
being said, I stayed at this place back in twenty nineteen,

(46:32):
and we went down into the basement where it's supposedly
one of the most haunted spots. And I'm a big
person on research, so when I stay at a haunted location,
I always do the research. I do a little bit
of research before, but then I do a lot of
research after because I kind of want to go in blind.
I want to see what I experience, see if anything

(46:56):
even happens, see if I can get any audio on
a digital recorder or anything like that, and then I'll
go back and do the heavy research. It's like, Okay,
we heard all the ghost stories, this.

Speaker 3 (47:07):
Is what I caught on audio. When I do that, I.

Speaker 1 (47:11):
Go back and look at census records, I see a
news I look for newspaper articles on any deaths that
might be associated with the property and stuff like that,
and I try to match up that with ghost stories.
And there's been a couple of places that people have
asked me to stay or go, and I'll do a
little bit of light research and I'm like, you know,

(47:32):
there's a story of a boy getting burned. A spark
came out of the fire and you know, he burned,
and now you can hear his voice, and it's like
happened in I don't know, the nineteen twenties. So I'll
look at it and I'm like, Okay, there's got to
be a newspaper article. It's got to be census records
about a little boy that lives there. There's nothing. You know,

(47:52):
there's past residents that lived in the house that said, yeah,
this place was never haunted. All of a sudden, these
people bought it and now it's haunted and the charge
and somebody one hundred bucks a night to stay there.

Speaker 3 (48:02):
So I take a lot.

Speaker 1 (48:04):
Of that into consideration. Now with the Sally House, it
was it was an interesting exception because the whole theory
behind the little Girl Sally is that it's not actually
a little girl. It's supposedly it could possibly be a
darker entity, something non human that's projecting itself as a

(48:25):
little girl. Now, like I said, I'm a huge skeptic.
I'm very logical about stuff, but I'm also very open
minded and I get in a lot to the to
the paranormal side of stuff. So when we went there,
I stayed ended up staying the entire night. We had
a live show in Atchison, Kansas that weekend.

Speaker 3 (48:45):
We did a whole weekend of events.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
And me and another podcaster and his wife we all
got to stay the night, and we did a contest
to have one of our one of our listeners get.

Speaker 3 (48:56):
To stay the night there with us.

Speaker 1 (48:58):
So we have a couple weird experiences because I would
go down there and I was sometimes I like to
poke the bear. If it's supposedly a haunted place, I'm
going to poke the bear, So I'm down in the basement.
It was weird because we were using what they call
it GeoPort, so it's kind of like a spirit box,
except it's more clear. You don't hear the white noise

(49:20):
or anything like that. And we're using this and I'm
basically talking a lot of crap about the previous doctor
who lived there, and I'm saying, you know, I don't
think these people accidentally died in your care I think
you did it on purpose. YadA, YadA, YadA. And you know,
we had a darker voice come through. Somebody had mentioned

(49:42):
like beside me. They're like, man, you got to stay
here tonight, like why are you doing this? And this
voice comes through the box at that exact time, and
it says good luck, and then it just starts laughing,
and I'm like, okay, that was weird.

Speaker 2 (49:55):
You know, so did you heard it? Then?

Speaker 3 (49:58):
Yeah, everybody heard it.

Speaker 1 (50:00):
It was we There's about five people down there at
the time, and after that happened, about three of them
went upstairs and they're like now, and I'll admit it
creeped me out a little bit. I was like, okay,
that was kind of odd timing.

Speaker 3 (50:13):
That was weird.

Speaker 1 (50:14):
But I mean it was saying the color one of
the hosts, Tracy, she has super bright neon pink hair,
and we were asking it, you know, hey, what color
is Tracy's hair? And it came through and it said pink,
clear as day, and it's like, all right, that's interesting.
So over the course of the night, after everybody leaves.

(50:35):
There's only like four or five of us who are
staying the night in this house. Everybody falls asleep. The
next morning, I wake up and I'm on the back
porch to this place, and I'm smoking a cigarette. And
one of the listener who won the contest, her name
is Cammy. She goes, she's out back smoking a cigarette,
and she just looks terrified, and I'm.

Speaker 3 (50:57):
Like, are you all right?

Speaker 1 (50:58):
And she's like, I'm really really from all right right now.
And I'm like, well, what happened? She goes, I got
up to go to the bathroom last night. I don't
remember anything after that. All I remember is waking up
upstairs on an air mattress in between Jerry and Tracy,
who were the other hosts. And she had no memory
of any of this at all, you know. I'm like,

(51:20):
all right, well, that's kind of, you know, kind of weird.
So we start looking through this book that they have
on the table where everybody writes down experiences they had
or how they liked the house and all that, and
we come to find out that there were a lot
of instances where people just lost time and had no
memory of it at all.

Speaker 3 (51:41):
In this house.

Speaker 1 (51:42):
Now, Jerry's side of the story was that he wakes
up and it's almost about three am, and he goes, yeah, man,
I wake up and at the foot of my bed,
Cammy's just standing there, just still with her hair, just
looking down, her hair all in front of her face,
and he says, she did move muscle for like ten minutes.
She just stood there, and then all of a sudden

(52:03):
she crawled and crawled in between us, and he goes,
the thing is, she's face to face with me, and
she's staring me dead in the face and her I mean,
she's not blinking. It's just a dead cold stare, dude. Like,
So he rolls over and he's like, I'm just gonna
try to force my eyes closed and just ignore the
situation right now. But the kicker was when he woke

(52:27):
up and he's like five six hours later, he said,
he turns back over and she is still in that
same exact position with her eyes open, staring at him.
Right when he's about ready to freak out, he said,
she blinks her eyes and like kind of looks around
like she didn't know how she got there, she didn't
know what was going on, and she freaked out and

(52:50):
that's when about the time I woke up and we
were out on the back porch. So that was definitely
an interesting experience. Eye person only didn't really experience much
I was hoping to. I did get creeped out a
couple of times. I will openly admit that. But fast
forward to last year. Last summer, I went and stayed

(53:14):
at that Indiana State Sanatorium. So we're doing little EVP sessions,
trying to record some audio. Now, my friend Cammy just
happens she flew in from Washington State and stayed the
whole weekend and she ended up going there with us
that night. So that being said, we're in a group

(53:35):
of like three or four people and we got the
spirit box out. This thing keeps setting asking me to
walk down certain hallways. So we asked it, were like,
you know, why do you like Justin so much? And
this voice comes through and it says because of his
soul everybody you know. It was like, oh man, that
was weird. I asked the question, hey do you know me? Like,

(53:59):
how do you know me? And it sounded like two
people talking to each other. One of them says to
the other one, it's Justin from Sally's house that right there.
Cammy is like, oh man, it's just it's weird because
the only two people in our group that knew I

(54:20):
had gone there and done all this and what happened
was my buddy Chuck and my friend Cammy, and those
two are like, Okay, it just got a little bit weird.
And that's why I always point out to people if
there's a guy in the basement with a microphone saying things,
how did he know that? You know, go down there

(54:40):
and prove it to me. Show me this guy doing this,
and I understand a lot of the words might be,
you know, programmed into a box.

Speaker 3 (54:48):
That's another thing.

Speaker 1 (54:49):
It's like, oh yeah, they programmed words or names and
stuff like that into there, and sometimes it gets lucky
and sometimes it doesn't.

Speaker 3 (54:56):
But when that.

Speaker 1 (54:56):
Audio came through clear as day, that right there was
probably one of the more interesting experiences I have had,
for sure, and I've had I've had a couple growing
up as well. There was an instance where I think
I was like eighteen or something like that, and I
used to have one of those older buddies. I was

(55:16):
friends with these two brothers and one was older, the
other one was in mi grade, the older one. He'd
always buy me some beer and stuff like that. So
he comes over and it's like a Saturday and he
comes over and it's, you know, two, three o'clock in
the afternoon. He's like, hey, man, going over to my
girlfriend's house. She's got a younger sister, like, let's grab
some beers. I'm like, all right, cool man. So above

(55:39):
the kitchen was was my mom's bedroom and we could
hear clear as day the voice come out, and it
was my mom's voice, and it said it said, don't go.
I need you to stay. I got stuff for you
to do. I need you to stay here. And my
buddy heard it clear as day too, and he's like,
ah man, he's like he's like that sucks.

Speaker 3 (56:01):
I'm like, yeah, it does.

Speaker 1 (56:03):
So he ends up leaving and I go into the
house and I'm just doing dishes, kind of doing some chores.
We all had chores growing up. So about an hour later,
my mom and stepdad pull into the driveway there. I'm like, God,
it's weird. I didn't even see him leave. And she

(56:23):
comes in. I'm like, when did you guys leave? Like
I've been in the kitchen for the last hour, hour
and a half and I heard you upstairs and she goes,
we've been going all day.

Speaker 2 (56:32):
You know.

Speaker 3 (56:32):
We were at.

Speaker 1 (56:34):
My stepdad's family a couple towns over. She's like, we've
been going all day. We just got back and I'm like, okay,
well that's weird because I just I heard your voice
like an hour ago telling me to stay home. And
right about then the phone rings and it's my buddy's
younger brother, the one who's in migrade, and he says, hey, man,
Ryan got in this wreck, so I'm coming to pick

(56:55):
you up.

Speaker 3 (56:55):
We got to go, like to the er, like, let's go.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
So we end up going to the er and my mom,
being who she is, she's.

Speaker 3 (57:03):
Like, oh, that's a sign.

Speaker 1 (57:05):
You know, the angels told you to stay home, and
dah dah dah. And I'm trying to like logically explain
this in my mind. I'm like, I was like, I
know I heard her voice, and to this day, my
buddy Ryan, it still does not believe it. He's like, dude,
I heard your mom And I'm like, I know, me too.
I don't understand it. And my mom is super into
the paranormal, so she's she's all about that, but yeah,

(57:28):
we got to the er and what happened was one
of his tires blue and he crossed center and hidden embankment.
His car rolled end over end three or four times.
The only thing that saved his life was that he
didn't have a seat belt on and to this day
he will not wear a seatbelt because of that, because
they said if he would have been wearing a seat belt,

(57:48):
I more likely would have twisted and decapitate decapitated him.
Now that when we were there, they were like, because
me and me and Justin were kind of talking about
how I was supposed to be in the car and
the was it the fire and rescue the first responders
are like, man, it's a good thing you weren't in
that car.

Speaker 3 (58:08):
Dude.

Speaker 1 (58:08):
There's no way, like anybody else would have survived. He's
lucky to be alive right now. So that that one
kind of stuck with me. Quiet, Yeah, that one stuck
with me. But other than that, man, it's just you know,
small occurrences.

Speaker 3 (58:23):
I love.

Speaker 1 (58:24):
I love exploring haunted places, partly because I love.

Speaker 3 (58:27):
I don't know why.

Speaker 1 (58:28):
I love abandoned places, just seeing what everybody left behind
and just kind of exploring and even if nothing happens,
I'm still happy because most of the time you're in
an old historical building of some sort. That's that's pretty
cool and pretty fun. But yeah, those are a couple
couple of my rides right there, So yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:47):
Those are pretty good rides. The closest, the closest I
ever came again, it was my mom was definitely a
strong believer, and when we were living in ad we
would pull out the Ouiji board, and the Ouiji board
would I had two sisters and my mother and I

(59:08):
first my dad again thought we were nuts. One night,
one night, it was storming and raining and we're doing
the Ouiji board and you know, it's kind of spooky
when it gets moving, and all of a sudden, my
dad had snuck outside. He was right next to the
window to the room and blew a harmonica. Made us
all jump about in the air. But anyway, we one

(59:31):
time we were we were there and the thing kept
saying killed the cat, killed the cat, killed the cat,
and we we were, well, that's not nice. We're not
going to talk and if we're going to have that
go down. But a couple of days later we had

(59:51):
a cat and the cat was hit by a car
and killed. So we never never pulled out the Ouiji
board again.

Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
That is intense though, that's wild.

Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
So that was the closest I can But I'll.

Speaker 1 (01:00:07):
Tell you what, that would probably scare me straight right there.
It's that's weird, that's wild.

Speaker 3 (01:00:13):
I'll tell us the.

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
Story that my mom she she was in she was
Scottish but they had moved to England and they she
was there in World War two, you know, as everywhere
is getting bombed, and she used to go to seances
and at the seances, the medium sometimes would kind of

(01:00:36):
list people from the area who were going to die,
like within the next week. I don't know how they
did it, you know, a teleprompter or something, but she
always swore that they were remarkably accurate. But in one
of the sciences, they or one of the mediums told
her that my mom had a guardian angel. She could

(01:00:58):
see the guardian angel would steer her clear. So anyway,
my mom was in a movie theater one night and
an air raid started and they always, she said, they
would stop the movie, flash up on the screen, stay
where you are, don't go out, you know where you
could get hit by rubbel and stuff like that, and

(01:01:20):
she swears she heard a voice that said, you know,
get out of here, and she left and the place
was hit, took a direct hit and many people in
it were killed. So she had her experiences for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:01:36):
Wow that sounds I bet she had some good stories. Yeah, wow, Yeah,
I remember not too much on the paranormal side. But
my grandma is from LaHave, France. She came over in
the early fifties and World War two stories are what
I grew up on because yeah, yeah, it's a lahav
support city there, so Nazis wanted it pretty bad. Yeah

(01:02:00):
it's I grew up here and about all that stuff too,
and I mean it's just right there. It's not too
far from Normandy either, So yeah, I grew up around that,
and I couldn't imagine growing up like that, to be
honest with you.

Speaker 2 (01:02:13):
Yeah, a whole different experience. So I guess the poor
Ukrainians are experiencing that. Yeah, sure, yeah they are, but no,
and that's why I said, I mean same here. So
you know, my boyhood was ghosts some World War two.
I mean that's that's basically all I spent time with.
And that's why getting to Omaha Beach was very important

(01:02:37):
to me. And oh yeah, and again it was one
of those places where it felt like you could feel
the history coming out of the ground. I don't I
don't know if it's just because it's so ingrained or
what definitely could feel that well.

Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
I tell you what, Gary, if you could tell anybody
randomly about your book and why it's so good and
why they should read it, what would you tell them?

Speaker 2 (01:03:03):
I think the thing that I would want to sell
the most is that it's kind of a mystery for
you to think about this guy who's surrounded a lot
by death and dying and is clearly stressing out. But
he begins to see ghosts, and my question for the
reader is are they real? Or is his brain starting

(01:03:27):
to fry out?

Speaker 1 (01:03:29):
Yeah? And you have the perfect background to break it
down and make it way more interesting too. And I'll
be honest, it's hard for me to get into books sometimes,
but this one was pretty easy because it sparked my interest.
As I've stated a few times, I get into the
logical factor and I'm always curious about the brain factor.
So I'm very happy that you were open to talking about,

(01:03:50):
you know, coma and near death experiences and shadow people
and all that stuff too. And I know my listeners
are really going to love this interview. And again, Desk
Pale Flag, just type it in, you can order it anywhere.
I will put a link to the book in the
episode description, along with posting that on social media as well.

(01:04:10):
And Gary, I can't I appreciate you coming on, man,
this was awesome, dude.

Speaker 3 (01:04:15):
I love talking to you.

Speaker 2 (01:04:16):
Yeah, this has been fantastic. And I mean, that's really
the main reason why I wrote the book was I
was hoping to have these types of conversations with people.
I hope it opens the door to talk to a
lot of people and hear what their experiences are and
what they think and go from there. But I am

(01:04:40):
very appreciative of you doing this for me.

Speaker 3 (01:04:43):
Oh man, I get into this stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:04:45):
I'm a very curious individual. I wanted to know about
all kinds of stuff, So this was an easy, easy.

Speaker 3 (01:04:50):
One for me.

Speaker 1 (01:04:51):
And I mean I apologize about the scheduling. We were
supposed to do this interview a couple of weeks ago,
and my son plays travel baseball and they have those
freaking pop up tournaments every now and then, and that
Saturday was one of them, I'm like, it's like, I
want to talk to this guy so bad. It's like,
but I'm always a father before anything else.

Speaker 3 (01:05:12):
So yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
Mean, that's great that you're doing. I had three sons,
so I know exactly what's your going.

Speaker 3 (01:05:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:21):
I got two of them, and one's one's a nerd
who never wants to do anything. He just reads articles
and is into the same stuff that I'm into. But
then I'm also into sports pretty heavy, and my other
son is a jock, so it's like I kind of
get the best of both worlds there.

Speaker 2 (01:05:38):
But yeah, yeah, I kind of had a similar mix
in some ways. You know. One was down in the
basement with chemistry sets and building rockets and all that
sort of stuff, which we got into as well, which
was a lot of fun. So that is all great.
Every one of them is great.

Speaker 1 (01:05:58):
Yeah, you should check out that that sleep study. I believe,
like I said, it was from Switzerland. It's it's fairly recent.
But yeah, they they had that girl and they simulated
a shadow person. I find that pretty interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:06:11):
I would are you saying they kind of developed the
picture from brain waves?

Speaker 4 (01:06:17):
Because I know they Yeah, they took her and they
deprived her of sleep and they had all the stuff
that's hooked up to your brain, and I guess after
a few days she said that she was seeing shadow
people and they just studied it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:34):
It was it's wild. All the papers should be readily
available online still because if and there was a lot
of talking there that I that was way above my head.
But it was just the fact that they did it,
you know, it's like, holy crap, they actually did something
to somebody to where she was seeing shadow figures after

(01:06:54):
a couple of days.

Speaker 3 (01:06:55):
And yeah, it was an interesting little study there.

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):
Yeah, I definitely want to see that. You know, we
had mentioned, but I just as a quick aside, my
whole life was sleep deprivation. We we were on call
every third or fourth night for my entire career, and
when we were on call at these trauma centers, you're
pretty much up all night, so you're just constantly sleep.

(01:07:23):
But in the end for me, it manifested as these
night terrors, but you know where you wake up screaming,
but you don't remember anything. So it was more disruptive
from my wife that was I don't know anything.

Speaker 3 (01:07:38):
It's like, I don't know what you're talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:07:40):
Man. All right, Well, Gary, you were welcome on anytime
you want. Just get a hold of me and we
can talk about all kinds of stuff because you were,
like I said, a very interesting guy to talk to you,
and I'm glad that you're also an open minded individual.

Speaker 2 (01:07:54):
So well, say the word. I'd be delighted to come back.
But I'll see if I can track down that uh,
that study, because that sounds fascinating, that sounds fun.

Speaker 1 (01:08:05):
It shouldn't be too hard if I can find it.
I'm sure you can, all right. All right, well, Gary,
you have a great Saturday, enjoy the rest of your day,
and thank you very very much for coming on.

Speaker 2 (01:08:16):
You too, and and by the way, good luck with
the future baseball tournaments.

Speaker 3 (01:08:22):
I appreciate it, we need it. All right. I will
talk to you later, sir.

Speaker 2 (01:08:27):
Take care of them. H