Life After Death: A Conversation about the Evidence that We Never Die

Welcome to the Living to 100 Club Podcast. Here's our host, Dr. Joseph Casciani.

Welcome to all of our listeners tuning in today. This is Joe Casciani, your host for this program, and this is the podcast From the Living to 100 Club, thank you for joining us and for being a member of our community. Here at the club, I've been promoting the notion of living to 100 and doing all we can mentally and physically to live longer and healthier. But I also like to emphasize that living to 100 is a mindset more than anything, a metaphor for pushing ahead. So we can say that living to 100 is a great destination or goal, but also if living to 100 is not in the cards, we can always stay positive while trying. This is the important part— keeping the mindset that we want to live a positive life regardless of what the circumstances are. Today we are again exploring the topic of life after death. Some listeners may have heard the conversation a few weeks ago with Bob Ginsberg as we were talking about the same topic and what scientific research is revealing for us about what happens to us after we die. Stephen Martin is our guest today. We discuss what he has learned from over 100 interviews with experts in the field and evidence he has gathered about life after death. Just a little background on Stephen: as a talk show host of a popular weekly internet podcast, The Truth About Life, it became clear to our guest that humankind is on the cusp of a transition to a new understanding of the true nature of reality. To share what he has learned and to help speed the transition, which he believes will result in a rebirth of optimism, he has written well over a dozen books, many of which have been— have achieved bestseller status on Amazon. Stephen is the former principal of the world-renowned ad firm that created the Geico Get-Go And Virginia Is for Lovers. His ad agency was called the Martin Agency. He is currently the editor and publisher of the Oakley Press. He is the only 3-time winner of the Writer's Digest Book Award, having won first prize twice for fiction and once for nonfiction. David, welcome to our program today.

Well, thanks for having me, Joe. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited about our chat.

Great, me too. I'm looking forward to it. I always like to begin by asking our guests to tell us a little bit about the journey that brought you to where you are today.

Okay, well, thank you. Uh, I, I was raised in a family of, uh, I would call them scientific materialists, which is pretty common these days, certainly in the 20th century. Uh, people who don't believe you can— that anything exists if you can't see it under a microscope. Everything is matter, everything is material substance. That's, that's the idea. That's the basic premise of scientific materialism. And I brought— I grew up believing that because that's what I was, uh, what my parents thought. But also, you know, in school, the science classes I took, that's, that's what I was taught. But, uh, when I was in my mid-20s, uh, I was living in Baltimore. I was working at an ad agency, and I lived in an apartment with two other guys, bachelors. None of us were married yet. And I had a really very bad case of the flu one weekend. And one Saturday night, I was upstairs in my bedroom nursing this flu. It was a really bad case. And yet I heard some people coming downstairs into the apartment. And pretty soon there was a party going on. Well, at 25 years old, you know, you're not going to let a little flu keep keep you from the party. So, so I went downstairs. I really had to struggle to get dressed and to do it because I was in bad shape. But anyway, I, I drank and I smoked and I did all— I did things I shouldn't have done in that physical shape I was in. And pretty soon I couldn't— I, I knew I had to get back upstairs and get back to bed because I felt so bad. And I practically knee-walked up and I flopped down in the bed and it seemed to start spinning on me. And, and I felt my, uh, I was nauseous and I felt like I was, my, I was gonna pop. And I did pop, and suddenly I was up at the ceiling looking down at my body. And, uh, long story short, I had this epiphany. I said, you know, I'm up here and my body's down there, and how can that be? You know, I'm I thought, as scientific materialists do, that the brain creates your consciousness. And so my brain's down there and I'm up here, agadabí. And this went on for a while. I looked at the ceiling. I looked at the room. I looked down at my body. And somehow or other, I just blacked out. And I woke up the next morning. But it stuck with me. I felt a whole lot better, by the way, the next morning. And, uh, but, you know, it started me on this quest of how can that be possible? How can you be out of your body? I didn't know— this was a long time ago. I'm in my 70s now, so it was 50 years ago, and I had never heard of a near-death experience. I'd never heard of an out-of-body experience. And so it started me on a quest I joined the Rosicrucian Society, which is a society of mystics that study metaphysical laws. I took all their courses. I rose from a novice to an adept. And then when the literature about near-death experiences came out, I was probably one of the first people to read Raymond Moody's book Life After Life, where he was a I believe he was either an intern or a resident at the University of Virginia, and, uh, he talked to about over 100 people who had had near-death experiences, and he reported on in this book. I read everything I could get my hands on. But anyway, that's a long story short as to how I went from being a skeptic and a scientific materialist to someone who believes not only in life after death, but in all sorts of things, uh, that all sorts of things are possible and having to do with what would be called paranormal activity. So all my career up until, I don't know, 20 years ago, I was in the advertising business. I was very successful with it, as you mentioned. And I'm a writer. I was a writer in the advertising business. I'm a writer down— I love to write books. I've written a whole bunch of them. A lot of them on this topic.

So you've been on this quest for most of your adult life to understand this, this other world. Um, yeah, you know, the story of the gecko is, is worthy of a conversation in itself. Maybe we can have you back and take a look at that sometime. Sure. Um, you've interviewed a lot of people, quantum physicists and others, who have had these near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences. So I'd like to, you know, just jump right into this, the meat of the topic, and help us understand this notion that consciousness exists independent of the brain.

Well, the basic idea of the theory is— and there are quantum physicists I've interviewed and others I've seen things they've written and videos they've done— there are a number of them that believe now that essentially consciousness is, is the ground of being, of reality. They call it the unified field. One of them compares that— his name is John, John Hagelin or something like that. He's got a PhD from Harvard, and he, he says that the ancient rishis of India, who I guess were the ones who founded the Hindu religion, they believe over there that Veda, which is a Sanskrit word, I think translates to knowledge, is the ground of being of reality. And he says they— that what they said about that parallels his research about the, the ground of being and how that created everything. And So essentially, I have come to believe that they're right, that these scientists, these quantum physicists are right, that the ground of being— only instead of calling it the unified field, I call it consciousness. And that's what really, if you look at Veda, what the rishis were talking about, and that it's a consciousness that we all share. We each— we think we're separate entities, separate from the whole, but we're really part of it. The reason we feel we're separate is because we have each have an ego that's been built up since birth, and we also have subconscious mind, we have memories. And so it feels like— and we think we're separate, but we're really down at the core, the, the universal subconscious mind. I guess that's what Jung called it something like that, Carl Jung. We're all connected there. And our bodies are like— I compare them to spacesuits or diving suits that allow us to function and be in this reality. But our consciousness really is non-physical. It's received by the brain and integrated into our bodies. And of course, while we're here, It's a body-mind experience, but when we die, we leave the body behind, but we don't leave our consciousness behind. We stay conscious. And so that, that's kind of an overview, I suppose, of what I believe is true, and what— and I'm not the only person who does.

Yeah, yeah. So that I Years ago, I was involved with an organization called the International Transpersonal Association, ITA. And their beliefs were based on this same concept that we are all connected, all living beings are connected. And it is through this life force, this external unified field, whatever we want to call it. So I wonder, Stephen, when we talked on the phone, use this metaphor of consciousness, or the brain is a receiver for our consciousness, almost like a cell phone. Like everyone has this capacity to connect with this external consciousness, but the brain acts like a cell phone. It does.

It's, uh, we're— this is an idea that, uh, the University of Virginia, there's an outfit up there called the Division of Perceptual Studies. It's been, it's been around for a long, long time. I'm not sure exactly when it started, but I know that the man who headed it up for many years, Ian Stevenson, started his research in the early 1960s studying children's memories of past lives and, and checking them out. And basically that is the conclusion they've come to after 50 or 60 years, that the brain is a receiver of consciousness that integrates it into our body, that— but that the brain does not create consciousness. It's a receiver. And there are a number of reasons they think that, which we can get into if you like, but they're basically four different areas that they say is pretty strong evidence that that's the case. And it makes sense with the idea that we're all one and that that this ground of being, whether it's consciousness or the unified field or whatever it is, we're all connected. We're like little bubbles within that. And, uh, but that's who we are at the core. And when we come into this physical realm, uh, we have to— we, we can't really operate here unless we have a physical body. And that's what the, uh, what the body allows us to do. But But it's our consciousness is controlling the body.

So yeah, and the consciousness is there before we come around, and it's still there after we leave, right? After our bodies die.

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And also, you know, if you— it appears that— and I know Christians have a problem with this, but that reincarnation is a fact. I mean, that Certainly the research done at the University of Virginia shows that it does happen. They've got more than 2,500 cases in their files. They've been at it for 60 years, and they've checked, uh, what the child said about his past life and who he was and where he lived and what his name was and whose— his job was and his relatives and so on and so on and so forth. And they checked out at least two-thirds of that 2,500 have they call solved cases, in that what the child said and what the past life was referred to match up. So somehow or other it happens, and I think it's something that we do, that we've all been here many times. I've actually been able to recall a couple of my past lives. Some people will say I'm dreaming or whatever, that I made it up. But, you know, they're real to me, so there you go.

Yeah, so the, the concept is that we are born and reborn and reborn again.

Yeah, the concept is that the whole— that life and the universe, the whole— what it's all about is evolution, that we're about— we have evolved. We've evolved from you know, one-celled animals in the sea to where we are now at the top of the food chain. And that is through a series of lives. And once we become aware, self-aware, uh, that's when we reincarnate as an individual. And our, uh, each of us as individuals, uh, evolves. Sometimes we regress because we don't behave properly, or we, you know, get off track, but I kind of compare it to the movie Groundhog Day where Bill Murray's character starts out as being a real self-centered jerk and he has all these things that happen to him during the day and then he goes to bed at night, next morning wakes up it's the same day and the same things happen and that goes on and on until he finally gets it right and he he no longer is this, this self-centered jerk, but he saves people, he treats them better. And so when he finally gets it right, he's able to move on to February 3rd. Well, that's kind of the way I see our evolutionary path is through reincarnation, is that we're— each time we come in, we have lessons to learn, and we can either get them right or not, or fail them. But if we fail, we got to come back and do it again, just like Bill Murray's character.

Right, we have plenty of chances to keep getting it right.

That's right.

Yeah. Now you mentioned the University of Virginia a couple of times and their Division of Perpetual Studies.

Is that perceptual?

Perceptual, not perceptual. Perceptual Studies. And they're doing a lot of this research, and you said they've established a lot of evidence, scientific evidence, on reincarnation.

Any other findings that they're, that they're promoting and Yeah, the, uh, I've interviewed the head of that twice on my podcast back when I had it, uh, Jim B. Tucker. It was Ian Stevenson who, who founded it, and he was a professor in the med— in the medical school at the University of Virginia. He was a— he was a psychiatrist, and he, uh, was interested in the subject, and he He was funded and got apparently a huge grant from the man who invented the Xerox machine, who was also interested in reincarnation. So Ian Stevenson went out and started collecting these stories. Nowadays they tell me, uh, Jim B. Tucker took over as the head of this. He's also a psychiatrist, he's a child psychiatrist, and He says they don't have any trouble at all finding cases because now that we have the internet and they've got a website, parents who have children who start talking about a past life, you know, will just do a Google search and they'll come across the University of Virginia's— well, the website for that division, Division of Perceptual Studies, which is part of the medical school, and get in touch with them. And so they get plenty of cases to check out. And there's some really fascinating ones. Jim B. Tucker's written 3 books that have a lot of cases in them that he talks about in those books. But reincarnation or children's memories of past lives, just one of the, uh, areas that they're studying. And of course, if someone is reincarnated, obviously the brain— and they remember their past life— brains don't contain memories. Brains don't create consciousness, because there's got to be a time between when the person died and when they were reborn where those memories came along and were still there. They were in that person's consciousness while they were between lives. The, the other areas that they're looking at and that they've done a lot of research, uh, one has to do with often people who are in a coma or have all— have, uh, you know, can't— their memories, you know, they can't remember. What is that? Not Alzheimer's necessarily, but the dementia and so forth. They, right before they die, when they're— they've been in a coma and they've been not been able to communicate, they will become lucid for a little while before they die. And the theory there with at the University of Virginia is that the brain has got a grasp on the person's consciousness while they're, uh, in that state where they can't communicate. But when it dies— and it's, it's damaged, the brain is damaged for whatever reason— but when the brain dies, it lets go of the consciousness, and that's what enables the person who is on their deathbed to communicate. This happened to my grandmother. I think I mentioned that when you and I talked before, where she became lucid for a few hours and commun— and talked with family and so forth who were around, and she knew she was going to die and so forth, and she did. She had— it had been months since she'd been able to talk or communicate. So they point to lots of these cases. They've surveyed people that work at nursing homes, nurses and so forth, who will attest to this, that but it's a fairly common thing that happens. Another area that they talk about has to do with people who have brain damage, particularly like— I think it's called hydrocephalus, which is water on the brain. And those folks can have as much as 95% of their brains incapacitated and still have normal and sometimes even above-normal intelligence. So the brain isn't creating their consciousness and thoughts and so forth. And then the other big area that they've been studying, obviously, is near-death experiences, where people will be clinically dead, perhaps in an operating room or wherever, and they'll leave their body, and they'll be able to describe what's going on, what the doctors and the nurses are saying to each other, and what— the instruments they're using, and all kinds of things there would be no way for them to know about while they're on the operating table and their heart is stopped. And they actually— one of the professors there at the University of Virginia who is also a psychiatrist and part of this Division of Perceptual Studies started, I think, quite a while ago a nonprofit organization called IANDS, I-A-N-D-S. International Association of Near-Death Studies. And if anybody wants to see some videos of people who have had these experiences describing them, you could put that into YouTube, Google, because there are dozens of them on there that are people that are part of this or members of this organization. He put it together so that people who had had these kinds of experiences would be able to share them with others who had had them. It's kind of support group kind of thing, and they have conferences and so forth. And anyway, those four areas— near-death experiences, children's remembers memories of past lives, becoming lucid right before death when they've been in a coma or whatever, and the brain damage. There was— there's one case history at the University of Virginia where there was a girl, 18 years old or so, who had been accepted to Smith College. Maybe it's a university now, but you know, one of the Seven Sisters. And she was in an automobile accident, was knocked unconscious. When they, they decided to operate on her, when they opened her brain, all that was inside her skull was a was the brainstem. There was no brain in there, yet she was an honor student who had high SAT scores and gotten into Smith. So that was one really fascinating case that they talked about.

Yeah, yeah, some interesting findings there. I want to go back to the point you made about when the brain has been affected by, you know, damage, whether it's dementia, some kind of neurological deterioration. I'm trying to understand the process there, or the concept that the, the person that becomes lucid is no longer operating under their dysfunctional brain, but they're kind of reconnecting with the, this consciousness.

As I understand it, What, what they're saying there is that the brain has a grip on your consciousness, while someone who has the brain is damaged, and so the consciousness is not coming through in order for them to be able to speak or whatever, because, you know, all those connections aren't there. But when the brain dies, it lets go of the consciousness, it releases it. Just as it releases it when you pass out of your body and into the, into the non-physical realm, or when you pass to the other side of the veil. But before you pass, apparently some people are able to communicate lucidly because their brain has let go, if you see what I mean.

So that, yeah, okay, so that accounts for the lucidity there. In the final minutes or hours where the brain is let go.

And with the girl who— the girl who was the Smith College— headed to Smith College, uh, had a brain stem, and of course that connected her to her body. But apparently her brain was able to somehow work. Her brain— her mind— the brain wasn't there. I had a boss who had been— it was early in my career. He'd been a colonel in the Air Force and had somehow, I don't know, in the war or whatever, got hit on the head. And when he was— he was fine, you know. I knew him for a number of years till once he was driving home and he pulled off on the side of the road and passed out, and he was taken to the hospital, and they did, I guess, brain scans or whatever, and half of his brain was gone.

Wow.

But he was able— he— no one would have ever known that, you know. He only had— I forgot which hemisphere— it was one or the other, one or the other one was gone.

Yeah, yeah. Sometimes when there is damage, um, the other healthy parts of the brain can take over some of the functions, not all, but sometimes.

Yeah, yeah.

So a lot of fascinating research, and I understand it's well established and it's been supported, and kind of there's a lot of concurrence among people with very, uh, kind of separate, uh, I mean, they're not related at all, but they're just expressing the same kind of experiences and shared collective experiences. I'm wondering, how does science reconcile with religious beliefs and all of this? Is there conflict, or do religious scholars kind of scoff at this science, or what's your—

I think that they— my experience is that— and my wife is a very strong Christian, so I— and I go to church with her, and I, you know, I enjoy the sermons and so forth, but I have a very different view of things. I mean, you know, Christianity, you know, I believe that Jesus was, was really was a psychic. He was in touch with the infinite mind somehow. And people are, you know, people like, uh, some of the Indian gurus and so forth. In fact, I think he must have studied in India, and that's where he got a lot of it. But that's just another beside the point. I think that most Christian churches ignore all this stuff because it doesn't jive with their belief that, you know, at the end of time or whatever, everybody's going to go to heaven, or when the rapture comes. It just doesn't fit the scriptures. And the other big thing is the reincarnation. You know, they— that is not part of the Christian canon, and there's a reason for it. And I've tried to explain this to my wife, but she won't listen. And that is that in 553, at the Second Council of Constantine, the Emperor Joseph— Jocinian, yeah— he wanted to get rid of the doctrine of reincarnation, which had been part of the church up until then. And he wanted to get rid of it, I think, and probably anybody you talk to who knows about this, because the idea was if you were going to be reincarnated, you didn't have to do what the church said. I mean, you're going to have another chance. They wanted to make it so you only had one chance to get to heaven. So he wanted to take it out. Now, the Pope and the bishops didn't want to do it, but it was like They had to. I mean, it was like the emperor said, "You got to do it," and they reported to the emperor. So they deleted that from, from the church canon. But if you read the Bible, and I have done this, there are plenty of things in there that indicate that the people of the time, Jesus included, believed in reincarnation. For example, at one point, I think it's in Matthew, I think it's in all three of the Gospels, all three of them except for John, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Jesus and his followers, the follower, he asks his followers, his disciples, who do people say I am? And the disciples answer, well, some people think you're John the Baptist, but others think you're Elijah or one of the prophets. Well, Elijah and the prophets lived 400 years before Jesus. So if Jesus was Elijah or one of the prophets, he would have had to been reincarnated Elijah or one of the prophets. Now, Jesus doesn't say he was Elijah or one of the prophets, but he doesn't say that's impossible either. Another thing that— another one that comes to mind is when Jesus and his followers come across a man who was born blind. And Jesus, of course, is able to rub mud in his eyes or whatever, you know the story, and he is able to make the blind man be able to see, restore his sight. And his disciples say, well, why was this man born blind? Was it his parents, or was it— was Was it him who sinned? Well, if the man was born blind and he created that— I mean, what they're talking about there is karma. If he created his own blindness by sinning, it had to have been before he was born, so it had to have been in a previous life or perhaps in a pre-life. But nevertheless, Jesus doesn't say no. Jesus says it wasn't him or his parents, it was so that the work of God could be seen, or something like that. And there are all kinds of references like that, that when you hear, they never say the word reincarnation, but it's obvious that— and the people of that time believed in reincarnation, certainly the Greeks and so on, people around them. So, yeah, uh, it's not in the church canon, but it would— you can blame the Emperor Justinian for taking it out. And then the other— they're all— I mean, I could go on and on about, about that, but, uh, not just reincarnation, other things that, that the church doesn't accept because it's not part of their teaching.

Yeah, yeah, there's some conflict, sure. And I'm guessing you don't have these conversations with your wife, or—

well, you know, uh, it doesn't last very long. I'd rather keep peace in the past.

Of course. Of course, you know, I, I always like to understand how this information can apply to people today. And what I mean is that when I had the other guest on talking about life after death, Bob Ginsburg, he started the Forever Family Foundation to help families understand and to help them get through their grief that there, there is this likelihood that, you know, people kind of survive after their body dies. So I, I asked him, and I would ask you the same thing, how does this information about the scientific research, the findings about life after death, consciousness pre-existing, how does this help people today? How does they— how does it offer some solace or relief, in your opinion?

I think there are a number of ways it does. I mean, first of all, when someone you love or one of your loved ones has passed, I mean, you're going to be reunited with them when you go through that veil. In countless near-death experiences, people report that their parents or their grandmother or a brother or uncle or someone who's gone before is often one of the entities that greets them when they pass over to the other side. The other thing is, so you're not, you know, you're going to be separate from that person for a while, but eventually you're going to be reunited. So it's not— there's that to look forward to. The other thing is, uh, the fear of death. That's some— that's something that doesn't exist with me anymore. I'm not worried about it, you know. I don't— I'm kind of like Woody Allen. I think he said that, uh, I'm not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens. But, but, you know, once it does happen, I'm not worried about my consciousness not continuing. I know that I'm going to continue on. And so losing that fear has made a huge difference in my life. It's like being freed. And I think I'll live longer because of that. I think that when you fear something, you have a tendency to bring it on to yourself. You know, it's like I believe that beliefs, our beliefs, create our reality. What we believe about ourselves, what do we believe about the world, what we believe about just about anything is, you know, what creates our environment. There's a great little book called As a Man Thinketh that was written over 100 years ago that is a, uh, just a great little book because it explains all that so vividly. Your thoughts, your beliefs, your attitudes create your reality. Well, if you're no longer afraid of death don't worry about it. You're not going to bring it on to yourself.

Yeah, it's not—

I think so. Uh, those are the two, the main things. And I also believe that we have, uh, kind of like we're part— each of us is part of a soul group that probably reincarnates together. Um, one of the— I've been out to the School of Metaphysics in Missouri a couple of times, and, uh, What they will do is, you know, you can— they have psychics that work very much like, uh, Edgar Cayce, if you know who he was, who kind of can access the infinite mind, the Akashic Records, whatever you want to call it. They'll, they'll be able to tell you how you were, uh, what your relationship was to different people who are special in your life this go-round. You know, you're your mother might have been your sister in another life, or your father could have been your brother, that kind of thing. And I think there's something to it. So, you know, we're going to go through eternity kind of together, so we shouldn't— and it makes it a lot easier when, uh, I think to accept, uh, that somebody's gone for a while because they're not gone forever when they pass.

Yeah, and it underlines the fact that we are all connected, right?

Exactly, exactly.

Yeah, well, that's good. I like that. That's, that's an uplifting, kind of exciting, uh, perspective on living and dying and living again. So, uh, we just have a couple minutes left. Tell us about your books. I know you've written a number of books.

Well, I think the one that, uh, the one that relates most closely to this particular conversation is called Life After Death: Powerful Evidence You Will Never Die. And it really has been a— I wrote it several years ago. It's been a good seller, a bestseller from time to time, certainly in its category. And you can get it on Amazon. What you might want to do if you're interested in things I've written, your listeners, I have a website. It's shmartin.com, S-H-M-A-R-T-I-N dot com. And on that website, you look up the top at the menu, there's a little tab that says books. Click on that, it'll go to that page that has covers of all my books, and you can click on any one of them and find out more about them or go to Amazon and buy them or whatever you want to do. But that book, Life After Death: Powerful Evidence You Will Never Die, is on that page, and it gives— it lays out the evidence. And I a whole lot more than we've talked about today because we only have so much time. And I've just come out with a new book about my, one of my ancestors who was one of the Salem witches. And, uh, that's kind of fun. And I've applied what I know about the afterlife and paranormal things to that situation and come to some conclusions that are very different from what the traditional idea of what happened in Salem. Is. And I'm working on a book right now that has to do with life after death and what you ought to be doing about your life now to make your next life and the one after, uh, as best it can be.

A title for that yet?

Yeah, yeah, I haven't got— it's, uh, gonna be something like, um, Life After Death, uh, What You Need to Know Now to Make Hit the Best It Can Be or something like that.

I haven't got— yeah, well, but I do— sorry, the website is shmartin.com and they can browse through your books and they can order them there on site. Yeah, yeah.

Well, what happens when you, uh, click on a cover, it takes you to the page on Amazon. You can probably read the first chapter or two, see if you're interested, and of course you can buy it there as well.

So yeah, great. Okay, just one last question. What would you hope our listeners take away? We've talked about a lot of, um, subjects, important subjects, some esoteric subjects. What would you hope our listeners take away from this conversation?

Well, what I try to do in, in the book we've just mentioned about life after death, uh, is I want to communicate to people that they are spirit that's having a physical experience, that they are eternal beings, that they're going to be around for not just a long time but for eternity. And, uh, you know, that to me is a comforting thing. Some people would maybe rather not be around forever, but the thing you need to do is, uh, you know, be, be the best person you can because you're going to be with yourself for a long, long time.

Yeah, that's a good point. That's a, that's a good, an important statement. Thank you for that. So as I said, we're, uh, we are out of time, but before we break, I just want to remind our listeners about a few items. I'm pleased to announce a new co-sponsor for our podcast, A Mighty Good Time. Are you looking for ways to engage and stay active? Check out amightygoodtime.com. It's a one-stop shop for events and activities for those 50 and over. It's free to search and it's free to post. Amightygoodtime.com. Also, there's a new offering on my website where individuals can arrange one-on-one coaching calls with me to discuss bouncing back from setbacks. How can we tap into our resilience? How can we find ways to make it over those obstacles we face on our different journeys? Take a look at the Work with Dr. Joe tab on our website, livingto100.club. Be sure to sign up for our email list to receive our newsletter and other announcements. And finally, pick up a copy of my book on Amazon, Living Longer Is the New Normal. I think that whatever age you're at, inspiration and a positive mindset can be put to good use. That's my message in the book. So thanks so much, Stephen, for being a guest on our show today. For anybody who might want to contact you, how can they do that?

Well, they again go to my website, shmartin.com, and hit the, uh, contact tab, and a little form will come up and you can fill that out and give me your message, and I'll get back to you. I like to get emails from people and and, and I answer them. So, uh, that they can get in touch with me that way.

Okay, shmartin.com. So thank you very much for being a guest on our program today. I really enjoyed it. I'm sure our listeners did too.

Well, thank you, Joe. I enjoyed it too.

Thank you for having me. And thanks to everyone for listening to this episode. Hope to see you next time.

Hi, this is Suzanne Newman, host of the Answers for Elders podcast and radio show. We are the North Star that guides you through the complicated journey of senior care with trusted experts in money, law, living solutions, and more. So join us on this station, your favorite podcast channel, or just go to answersforelders.com. Meet the wayshowers who will help your journey go a lot easier.