Hacking the Afterlife with Jennifer Shaffer, Luana Anders and Giordano Bruno

Another mind bending episode of our podcast. As note in the podcast, Jennifer and I haven't planned our podcasts in advance.  We just kind of "show up" to see who our moderator on the flipside has brought to class. In this case, it just so happens to be someone that I've researched - the scientist Giordano Bruno.  When he showed up he said I had been writing about him recently - and referred to my latest book, which no one on the planet has read or seen.  Jennifer did not know who Giordano Bruno is - or was - and so I was able to ask him some specific questions. Bruno's story is that he was a Dominican Friar, who was famous for his memory - he appeared in royal courts doing amazing feats of memory. He taught in a University in Switzerland, and it was one of his students who reportedly complained to the Church when he talked about how the solar system worked - he claimed he knew that the earth went around the sun. When digging into his story, I found that he had an experience where he "saw how the heavens worked' and described a classic near death event.  He made the mistake of telling people about it - how he had "seen himself traveling into space and noted how the universe worked."  The ran him afoul of the Vatican, where he was brought up on charges, tortured beyond imagination or description and a statue of him is in Campo Dei Fiori in Rome.  I have searched through my books, and found that I referenced Bruno in the book "It's a Wonderful Afterlife" where I spoke about his journey - but this was prior to meeting Jennifer and we have never had a discussion about him or with him before.  So this is new information for Jennifer. His near death event (she said he had two) his ability to speak from memory (he said it was as a result of the event) and he was a friar (which she said he was) that he was tortured and killed by the Vatican. She correctly identified the city where his statue resides.  I normally edit out the pauses in our podcast, but did not in this case, so that people could hear that despite my interrupting her now and then, for the most part I sit and wait to hear the answers. Plus, the answers are so mind bending, I wanted the audience to be prepared to hear them after a long pause. So - here we are. Talking to someone who was burnt at the stake February 17th, 1600. Four hundred and twenty two years ago. But he recounts it as if its yesterday. And for all intents and purposes, the way time works on the flipside, it feels like yesterday. But that doesn't mean that he didn't have things to pass along to the planet - and showed up to tell us a few. Enjoy.