Feb 16, 2026 Soul Inspired with Joe Borowsky Podcast

In todays episode, I spoke with Don Winner who is a retired intelligence specialist and decorated veteran of the United States Air Force. We explore his deep, data-driven research into near-death experiences.

With a career spanning military intelligence, investigative journalism, and advanced strategic analysis, Don brings a uniquely analytical lens to the NDE phenomenon. Rather than approaching the subject from belief or emotion, he has studied thousands of cases using structured evaluation methods to identify consistent patterns across cultures and backgrounds.

In our conversation, we dive into what his research reveals about consciousness, the afterlife, and the possible origins of spiritual belief itself. Don shares the conclusions he’s drawn from years of examining the data and why the consistency in NDE accounts may point to something far more profound than coincidence. His book is entitled “You’re Going To Die Someday, Right?: Near Death Experiences Reveal What Happens Next”

Dons Links: Amazon Paperback: You’re Going To Die Someday, Right?

Books.by: https://books.by/winnernde

Website: https://www.winnernde.com/

Email: don@winnernde.com

If you have a story or an inspirational message you would like to share, you can use the link below to contact us to see if you’d be a good fit as an upcoming guest! https://www.joeborowsky.com/thesoulin…

Want to join our facebook community? Join here!   / soulinspiredpodcast   Instagram:   / thesoulinspired   Joe Borowsky’s Music Youtube Channel: ‪@JoeBorowsky‬

• The opening and closing song on this episode is called “Soul Vision” and was written and performed by Joe Borowsky.

The Soul Inspired Podcast — Interview with Don Winner

Host: I want to welcome everybody back to another episode of The Soul Inspired. Today we’re speaking with Don Winner. He’s defined as an NDE researcher, amongst many other things, so I’m going to talk to him about that. But first of all, thank you so much, Don, for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.

Don: Thank you very much for having me. I greatly appreciate it.

Host: I was mentioning to you before that this is a little bit different — sometimes I get people on who’ve had near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences and all these different things. As soon as I heard about your background, I was like, “Hey, got to get this guy on.” I want to find out a little bit about what you’ve been doing and your life journey. So I actually do want to go back a little bit with you first, if that’s okay, because everyone has a bit of a storyline as to how they got into this area. Maybe let’s start a little bit with career-wise, if that’s okay — when did you start moving in that direction?

Don: Actually, that was a relatively sudden change. Besides having a general interest in it over many years, I actually got seriously involved in doing research in the beginning of last year, 2025.

My father is 92 years old currently. He had an incident — he basically had a stomach bug, and we were out at an appointment together. It was actually my medical appointment, but as we were leaving the facility, he passed out. To make a long story short, he went down. I ran back inside and said, “Hey, call 911, my father passed out.” There were like 30 nurses and 8 doctors who came out to take a look at him. They got an ambulance, and again to make a long story short, he just had a stomach bug, got dehydrated, and passed out.

A couple of weeks after that we were talking about the incident, and he mentioned in passing that the last thing he remembered before he passed out was thinking, “I wonder if this is what it’s like to die.” I’m like, okay, dad’s thinking about dying — interesting. So I started to look into near-death experiences. I was aware of the topic, but I started to really dig into it, and it captured my attention. I went all the way down that rabbit hole.

Host: Wow, okay. So this happened just recently — you got into this within a year?

Don: Within a year or so.

Host: Okay. So before I ask you questions around that, I want to get a little bit about your personality, just to see why — because based on what you’ve done in your life, it’ll give me an indication of how you approach the subject. What kind of background do you have in your work?

Don: My background is military intelligence. I joined the Air Force in 1980 at 18 years old, straight out of high school. Graduated in June, and in September I was in basic training. I went in initially as a Korean linguist, so I spent six years as a Korean linguist collecting, analyzing, and reporting on intelligence information — signals intelligence, it’s called SIGINT.

After six years of that I switched over to Spanish. This is 1986 — Ronald Reagan is president, you’ve got Iran-Contra, Oliver North. They were afraid the dominoes were going to fall in Central America — the Soviet Union and Cuba were exporting weapons, and they were afraid there’d be a domino effect of nations falling to communism throughout Central America. So one day they realized, “We need more Spanish linguists.” I said, “I’ll retrain,” in conjunction with a reenlistment, so I switched over to Spanish and did that for many years.

Eventually I was assigned to the National Security Agency. I was at Fort Meade, where I went through a program at the Defense Intelligence Agency and got a Master of Science in Strategic Intelligence. I was trained as an analyst and a reporter in intelligence from many different angles and many different agencies. The last five years I was in the military, I was in Special Operations — a higher level, with global exposure and different elements of assets and resources.

After I retired — I did 20 years in the military, all of it in military intelligence — I worked as a military defense contractor, also doing intelligence collection, reporting, and analysis, for five years. Then I spent eight years as an independent journalist — an investigative journalist in Latin America, taking those same skills of collecting information, analyzing it, and reporting on it, but now in a journalism setting instead of a military intelligence setting. It’s the same skill set, the same process: get the information, figure it out, report on it. That’s all you’re doing. So that’s the background, and that’s where the skill set comes from.

Host: Okay, so this is why this is really interesting, right? Because you’re very data-driven, very analytical by nature — I don’t want to assume, but based on what you just said… A lot of people who get into spirituality have what we might call a “woo-woo” personality — more floaty, artistic types. I’m artistic, but I run businesses. I’ve always said to my students — I teach a lot of different types of students, some very floaty and touchy-feely, others very analytical, wanting to know exactly how to play a song, why they should sing it that way, wanting to analyze each piece of what I’m teaching. I’m kind of in between. Unfortunately you get that “poor musician” mentality — a lot of musicians think they can just sit under a tree and survive playing music and making everyone feel good, but you have to have some business background too. So talking to someone like you, approaching this from a space of analysis that might be different from others — I’m excited to talk to you about it.

So you have this background, your father has this close call — or at least it sparked a moment where he questioned his existence and what happens after it’s over. 92 — you’ve got good longevity there. So I’d ask: in doing the research, have you already noticed any consistent patterns that show up across most near-death experiences? I’m wondering if you’ve seen anything like that in the research you’ve done already.

Don: Well, that’s the entire point. The other thing I left out is that I have ADHD, so I have this ability to hyperfocus on things. If I get interested in a topic or subject, I’ll go all the way down that rabbit hole. I’ll sometimes forget to eat, I’ll wake up at 3:00 in the morning and go “Aha!” — a concept will hit my brain, and that means I have to hop out of bed, put some slippers on, get a cup of coffee, and go write a chapter in the book because it just all came together. But when I get focused on something, it’s difficult for me to break away and think about anything else until I’ve got it figured out to my own satisfaction, for whatever reason.

So when that process started — you might say, “Well, it’s been a year.” Yeah, but the way I approach things is, I just look at the data. For me it’s pure data. I don’t care where it leads — there’s no bias there at all, I don’t have any agenda whatsoever. It starts off as just being generally interesting — that’s kind of when I first started poking around at things. Then it goes from interesting to intriguing, and from intriguing to “that’s absolutely amazing” — like, what are the consistencies? So I’m looking for those consistent patterns, and then as an analyst you have to set your framework: I’m going to work within this box only, I’m going to exclude these things, I’m going to focus on this data set. Then I’m going to go look for data.

Now that we have the internet available to us, along with tools to translate things — “Let’s go look at near-death experiences in Korean,” yay, I can go do that — there’s no limit to the amount of information available. The numbers are absolutely astounding. When you think there are 8 billion people on the planet right now, and almost every one of them has one of these things in their hand connected to the internet somehow — the amount of data is absolutely amazing. If you do the math, there’s probably 25,000 to 30,000 new near-death experiences around the planet every day.

Host: Wow.

Don: That’s a lot of data. And then when you listen to these people, it gets — for me anyway — repetitive. If I turn on a YouTube podcast and listen to the story, I can basically sit back in my brain and go, “Yep, here it comes. Okay, check, there’s the out-of-body experience. Check, there’s the void. Check, there’s the tunnel. Check, there’s the white light. Check, he’s talking to God. Okay, let’s do the life review. Now we’re going to wander over to the garden and meet the ancestors, talk about reincarnation and the life plan for a minute. Okay, I’m coming back to my body.” The consistencies are redundant to the point of being almost ridiculous. Every story is absolutely unique while simultaneously being consistent on most of the data points. That’s my experience — again, this is just what the data tells me. These are the conclusions I’ve reached when I analyze it.

Host: I remember when I first heard I was going to have you on the show, the first question that came to me — and it just came to me again — is around an area I’m always trying to figure out. A lot of the time what’ll happen is I’ll post an NDE video and get comments, or I’ll get emails from people trying to explain that they’ve figured it all out, here’s what it is. So I get these individuals who’ve somehow concluded that they know everything, which I don’t think is ever possible, really.

But one of the consistent things a lot of people assume — and it’s something I have not found, and it could be that I’m an anomaly with the 150 people I’ve talked to — the assumption I always get is: “Well, they grew up Christian, they met Jesus. Oh, they were Buddhist and they saw Buddha. Oh, they’re an atheist and an alien came to them.” I’m just making that up, but that was the assumption I had before doing this, from some of the readings I’d done in the past — there are different books out there, and when I was younger I was really fascinated with NDEs and read into that. I personally have not found that to be completely consistent, in my own research. I’ve had people who were completely atheist and met Jesus. I’ve had people who were extremely religious and ended up on another planet with an alien being.

So this is where I get a little confused, because if a lot of people are assuming something is coming from internally, from within this life experience, driving the experience — which is a fine assumption to make — I’m wondering if you’ve seen the same thing, those inconsistencies.

Don: So — and again, this is just what the data shows me — when someone passes away and flatlines, absolutely dead, not hallucinating, not on drugs, not some other issue — this is where I draw my own personal box for the data: I want some kind of clinical death that’s verifiable. Then the person passes away, and there’s always that transitionary period, normally very brief. How often have you heard, “I left my body, but it took me a while to realize that was me and I was dead and out of my body”? Right — your consciousness, your soul, continues after death, and it takes a moment because you’re still wired into the pattern of thinking you had when you were alive. So it takes a minute or a little while to become accustomed to the new reality.

The idea of a spirit guide being right there, like, “It’s okay, I’m here to help you transition, we understand you’re going to be a little confused” — there’s an entire subset of data of people who thought one thing and found out something else was true during the NDE. For example, there was a person who was very Catholic and had thought his entire life that reincarnation just wasn’t a thing. He was shown a tapestry of prior lives he himself had lived — hundreds of them — like, “Yeah, these are all the lives you’ve lived, bro, so reincarnation is a thing. Oh, and by the way, here’s the life plan for the life you’re living right now — you see right there, let’s see what it’s like to be Catholic. You picked this life before you came here.” He’s like, “Huh, okay.”

And there’s the same kind of thing with atheists. If you want to do something fun and interesting, go on some of these atheism chat groups — I call them “orthodox atheists.” They’re completely convinced there’s nothing: you die, you go in the ground, the worms eat you, that’s it, have a nice day. And they’re completely shocked to find out that’s not the case.

So it really doesn’t matter — I guess what I’m saying is two things. There’s this transition period between what you thought was going on when you were on the planet, and then your near-death experience, where you find out some of those things are either slightly or significantly different. And the other side of that is the near-death experience is consistent for everyone, regardless of whether you were Christian, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, whatever — globally. The near-death experience is consistent to being human, no matter what you thought. The same thing happens. That’s what the data shows, anyway.

Host: No, I love that. A couple things I’d say — first of all, this is why I asked about your background in the beginning: at least you’re not approaching this from a biased place. If you’re going into atheist groups and you’re not an atheist — I don’t know — that means you’re trying to gather data from all sides. I think what I’m finding is you’re approaching it from a place of, “Even if this is my belief system, I’m still going to go over here and see what’s going on over there.” Like someone such as myself — I don’t really go into atheist groups, and I probably should.

Don: The funny part is, I have many atheists who come on this show — they were very strong atheists before their NDE, and then they come back and go, “Oh wow, now I’ve got to figure this whole thing out.” It shakes their world. The same thing can happen with someone who’s super religious, because they have this strong religious doctrine engulfed in their mindset from childhood, and they find something else out, and they have to deal with that.

Host: I just want to say I appreciate that you do that, because it shows you’re not coming at it from a biased angle.

Don: You’re looking at it as an analyst, where any kind of bias is kryptonite. You have to stay away from that at all costs — if you look at any situation with any kind of bias whatsoever, it will skew the product, it’ll skew the bottom line, it’ll skew your analysis. So you have to recognize that even if you do have some kind of bias, you go, “Okay, I’m thinking this maybe because of that — let’s take a step back, turn that off, and just ask: what does the data say?” And whether you’re going into an atheist group or a religious group or talking to any particular set of people, the trump card is that near-death experiences happen to people regardless of what they happen to believe while they’re here on the planet. It’s the great equalizer, kind of. And again, I have no bias, no agenda whatsoever. I really don’t care what anybody thinks — it doesn’t matter. It’s “Hey, God bless, off you go, have a great day.” I’m just telling you what this data says, that’s all.

Host: I only bring it up because it’s human nature for everyone to have a strong opinion on one set of beliefs or another — it seems to be the common thing. An example: I just did a call-out for NDE guests and took a different approach. I thought, this will be interesting to see. The approach was, “Would love to interview anyone who had a very strong religious background before their near-death experience, but whose belief system stayed strong after.” Well, it got a lot of comments — people saying, “Religion’s fake, I know because I died,” very strongly held opinions. Or someone said, “I wouldn’t want to watch your show because you’re being biased, you’re trying to find just religious NDEs.” I’m like, they don’t realize I’m actually trying to research whether that stays intact.

From my own personal research — which I haven’t even meant to do — it’s not always staying intact. In fact, a lot of people with strong religious backgrounds come back from their NDE and stop going to church, or they say, “My home is my church, my family is my church, the love of the world is my church.” They have a different mindset now. I’m not saying that’s everybody, but I can probably count on more than two hands the number of people who’ve given that kind of feedback when they come back. So I’m just trying to be the messenger — get the information out there, and whatever people come up with is something.

Don: What you’re talking about is subsets of data, from my point of view. There are subsets of people who had different beliefs going into their NDE, and as a result of the NDE they’re somewhat changed afterward. What I like to say is that all of the world’s religions get a C-minus — they kind of get the generalities more or less correct, but it comes down to franchising. If you look at all the world’s religions in the format of fast-food franchises — have you ever heard of Jainism? J-A-I-N-I-S-M?

Host: No, I have not.

Don: You haven’t heard of it for a reason — they don’t care if you follow their religion or not. It’s in northeast India, about four or five million people max, and it’s the seed cosmology for both Buddhism and Hinduism. If you look at what people who believe in Jainism follow, and how they conduct their lives, it’s basically a photocopy of NDE data. If you took all the NDE data available, boiled it down, and made a religion out of it, you’d get Jainism. But — and this is exactly why people say “my living room is my church now and I see the world differently” — that’s kind of the attitude people adopt: “I understand this is a global thing and I don’t really need somebody else telling me what to do or how to think.” But that’s a really bad franchise.

Host: Okay, right.

Don: So what happens is, if you take the core tenets of what you learn studying NDEs, the result isn’t 2.3 billion Christians or billions of Muslims around the world — because those are good franchises. Have you ever had anybody knock on your door while you’re cutting your lawn and say, “Hi, I’d like to discuss turning you into whatever it is I believe”? Those are recruiters — they’re trying to recruit you into their group, because people want their church to grow, more members, because that includes influence, money, leverage, power, elements of control. Those are the elements of what make a good franchise. NDE studies do not make good franchises — it just doesn’t work that way.

Host: Right, right. No, I love that. I recognize this and understand it.

Don: That’s just part of the data, part of human nature. I’m not trying to challenge anybody’s beliefs — and again, the trump card is, it doesn’t matter at all what you think, practice, or believe during your entire lifetime. On the day you die, the NDE experience, in its purity, will occur to you. That’s what’s going to happen — with that filter of what you drag with you when you cross over, for a period of time.

My favorite story — I say this one a lot. A guy was very religious, Christian, I think Catholic, I forget. He died in a hospital operating room, flatlined, left his body, sees his body on the operating table, realizes he’s dead. He looks to his right and sees what he describes as a luminous being with beams of light coming out of every pore. He turns to this being and says, “You must be God.” Well, the funny thing is the being had a sense of humor — he goes, “No, dude, I’m not God.” The man goes, “Well, in that case you must be Jesus.” “Nope, not Jesus either.” The man says, “Well, then who are you?” He goes, “My name’s Drake. I’m your spirit guide, here to help you transition” — and basically explains it to him, with kind of an ironic sense of humor. The guy’s like, “Yeah, yeah, natural for you to think that, but it’s just me, here to help you through the process.” So that’s an example of how that preconceived notion plays out immediately when you leave your body, and then you slowly come to realize what’s really going on.

Host: See, and this is when we talk about consistencies — I just spoke with someone a few weeks ago who had a similar experience. She passed away in the hospital, was standing beside her body, went through a bunch of things. There was someone with her — an energy, an entity of some sort — and she decided, “Hey, I’m not ready, I’ve got to go back.” They indicated, “You don’t have to go back, it’s time for you to move on,” but at some point they concluded she could continue on to do other work. She was like, “Well, how do I get into my body?” And the energy looked at her, kind of frustrated but humorous at the same time — he’s like, “Ah, you’ll figure it out,” and as he’s drifting off, she gets back into her body. So it’s not the exact same scenario, but there’s a similar vibe happening — and she would never have thought that was going to happen in the experience.

I wanted to bring something up with you. We talked a little bit about this earlier and it really struck me. I’m at this point on the show where I say things, and I think — if this had been 10 years ago, I would have felt completely nuts saying some of this stuff, maybe worried about people’s judgments or opinions. But the thing I was going to say is, I’m starting to believe that what we understand as memory, what we store as memory, no longer in my mind exists just within the brain. I’ve concluded, just on my own findings so far, that there’s some sort of memory data that exists within our energetic body — something within us that moves with us and comes back. That’s the only thing I can conclude based on what I’ve been told. And when I think of that, it completely challenges my idea of what the brain is — it shatters my understanding of what we are and what the brain’s function is. Is this something you can understand, based on talking to the people you do?

Don: Of course. What you’re describing is the life review process. You die, leave your body, go through the tunnel, meet God, then go off to the life review. The life review comes to you telepathically — as a complete download. Think about it: from the moment of your birth to the moment of your death, every single experience, no matter how trivial, is recorded — basically uploaded to the cloud, literally. So when you go to do your life review, it’s not like watching a movie or re-watching your entire life — it’s one complete download of all that data at once.

Every conversation you’ve ever had, every interaction with anybody else, is recorded in its entirety — the visual, the audio, the conversation, the words you say, and the feelings attached. Let’s say you’re having a really bad day and you go into a bank, and for whatever reason you snap at the teller — you’re just not a nice person in that moment. Then you leave, get in your car, cool down, and think, “Man, I wasn’t nice to that teller.” You’ll see that interaction in your life review, and you’ll see how you made that person feel in that moment. It all comes down to treating others with caring, compassion, and consideration — putting yourself in their shoes, asking how you make other people feel. So going back to your point — you’re absolutely right that everything we do during our entire lives is recorded and available for the life review.

It’s interesting how that plays out for people who’ve led very difficult, challenging lives — trauma settings, addiction settings, abusive settings — whether they were the abuser or the abused, or both. Those things get played out for them. There was one woman, very telling — she was a drug addict with small children, and she basically put drugs ahead of her own children, made a lot of terrible choices, and ultimately died of a drug overdose. She was out for maybe five minutes or more, then came back. During that time she went through a complete life review, and she said many times that it felt like she was in hell — a hellish hell — because she was forced to confront all the bad things she’d done during her life. As a result, when she came back, she completely changed her life, because she’d come to realize what she had done to others.

The interesting part is that on the other side, there’s no time — time doesn’t exist. So if this life review process feels like a long time to examine and confront all that information, it could happen basically instantly here on earth, while over there it might have felt like a hundred years. Time is irrelevant on the other side.

But going back to your original question — yes, you’re absolutely right, every single thing is recorded, and your review reflects that. If you go back 50 or 60 years, the idea that there’s something in memory within us beyond the brain would have seemed kind of silly. I have some very good friends who are science-driven — and I believe in science too, I think there’s supposed to be a combination — more of an atheist-type viewpoint, where the mindset is, “No, this is what you have, this is where the brain is, it has the memory and everything.” And the thing I always bring up — this is a perfect example — here I am having this conversation with you on a wireless network. The data of your face is being pushed onto my screen through a completely invisible format — an invisible piece of information coming through the air to my Mac so I can see you. And 50 years ago, that concept wouldn’t have even occurred to us.

Host: So if that’s possible — if I’m able to wirelessly see an image of you and have a conversation through some kind of invisible field — then how difficult would it be to understand that we have some kind of invisible embodiment within us that stores some kind of experience or data? That’s where I’ve always thought — I don’t know why we’d think this is just a physical experience. I’m starting to believe there’s the physical, which is our “meat suit” or body, but then there’s an energy within us with an invisible force connected to something completely different.

Don: There’s what’s called the eternal soul. Your eternal soul basically stays in heaven, and for any particular incarnation, you put out a pulse of energy — that’s the reincarnation you’re experiencing as your life right now. Your entire true self doesn’t come down to experience the reincarnation — most of it stays back. The idea is to literally live and learn — you learn and grow from your experiences, and your soul continues to mature over time.

There are all kinds of data subsets — for people who’ve experienced very difficult and traumatic lives, practically nobody understands or realizes that before you come to this life, basically everything you’re going through right now, you picked. It’s like picking things off a shelf. My favorite example was a woman who had a chronic illness her entire life — every kind of disease imaginable — and eventually that’s what caused her near-death experience. She was in a hospital setting, needed an operation, died from it, was out for several minutes, and came back with a very rich NDE.

During the part where they’re discussing the life plan she created for the life she’s living now — picture a big table with five other guides going over her plan — she could see the part that said “chronic illness,” and she goes, “Huh, I picked that, didn’t I?” They said, “Yep.” She’d wanted to see what it was like to live a life riddled by chronic illness. She said, “I think I’ve already learned everything I need to know about that — as a matter of fact, it killed me. Think we can get rid of it?” And they said, “Yeah, sure, no problem,” and basically reached down and plucked it out like a circuit breaker. She said, “Okay, great, thanks,” and went back to her life. When she recovered, all of her chronic illness just went away — it was no longer part of her life, because during the NDE they pulled out that circuit breaker.

Host: Wow. So we all make these things up before we come here.

Don: We all do.

Host: That is fascinating. That also speaks to when you meet someone and feel like you’ve seen them before — I either think you’ve recognized them from a future point, like “I’ll meet you when I’m 57,” or it could be past lives, I don’t know — I’m always trying to figure these things out.

Here’s a question — not that it’s funny, but you’re somebody with a decorated background in a lot of different things, who’s worked for a lot of “three-letter” agencies, which I say only because I’m not naive to believe there are things humans aren’t meant to know about. I do believe there are reasons certain decisions are made about what we’re told. That goes deeper than — if I look at what’s going on now, people talking about UAPs and interdimensional beings, actually going in front of Congress — these are people who’ve been within these organizations saying these things. So they’re either all wacky, or they’re trying to get a message out, and for some reason there’s a big stone wall in front of a lot of it.

In saying that — if we talk about near-death experiences, what we’re learning about within spirituality and NDEs — I can’t help but believe there are people, individuals, or researchers out there who’ve already concluded the things we’re talking about today, with an almost purity of conclusion — like, “We know this for sure,” whether that’s using remote viewing or whatever, I could go down a whole rabbit hole. Okay, sure — why on earth would we not be told this information, if it’s our true nature of who we are?

Don: Well, I would say that if you have a computer and an internet connection, you’ve been told that information is available for anybody who’s interested to go figure it out — I mean, I did. The information is available. Think about your average person — they’re completely consumed with day-to-day functions: got to pick the kids up from soccer practice, got to go shopping, the dog needs a shot. You don’t have time to focus on these issues. Most people don’t, anyway. The ability to sit around like a monk under a tree and contemplate the universe is interesting, but it doesn’t really line up with the Girl Scout meeting, you know what I’m saying? People have stuff to do.

If you have the time to put these things together — personally, for me, as an analyst, I went through that process, from interesting to intriguing to amazing to acceptance as fact, that all of these things are an accurate reflection of what the near-death experience globally indicates. That’s my own conclusion, the result of my analysis.

The other thing — I took it one step further and looked at it historically. Humans have been on the planet for 300,000 years. Just making one simple assumption: if people are having near-death experiences now, we’ve been having them for a very long time. Put that in context — writing only happened about 5,000 years ago. The first thing we get out of that is Gilgamesh — if you’re familiar with it, an amazing but vivid tale. Up until then, 295,000 years of oral history — people telling stories around campfires, and what story are you going to tell? The most interesting one.

This is where the global existence of the concept of God, a soul, an afterlife, heaven, ancestors in the afterlife, the “happy hunting ground” or whatever you want to call it — all of these concepts come from the global human experience of near-death experiences over those hundreds of thousands of years of history. Those fundamental concepts were then crunched, chewed, and turned into different religions, and eventually you end up with the religions that are the best franchises, and that’s what spread around the world. But the seed cosmology for all of that was the human experience of near-death experiences over hundreds of thousands of years.

And is that being withheld from us? Well, I’ll guarantee you that especially during the Cold War, and even now, all the world powers vying for control over us are going to try to find any advantage they can — whether that’s remote viewing or anything else. If they can get an advantage, they’re going to exploit it.

Host: I didn’t know if your answer was going to be strictly around religion, because there’s a lot of profitable organizations out there. It’s the same thing as if we woke up one morning and were told aliens exist, and there’s this interdimensional place within our existence we haven’t understood — and here’s all the information, just thrown at us at once, like turning on a faucet. People like you and me would be like, “Interesting,” we’d sit and listen and want to find out more. I would say that checks with the data. Have you looked into the DMT studies in England, by any chance?

Don: No, I haven’t.

Host: Okay, you might want to check this one out, it’s pretty cool. I ran into it but set it aside since it doesn’t really tie to near-death experiences. What they’ve done is figure out how to titrate DMT. Normally a DMT trip is a 10-15 minute experience, not very long, but they figured out how to administer it via a slow drip so the experience lasts an hour or two. Then they’d find volunteers — literally people off the street — say, “We’re conducting this study, we’d like to sit you in a chair, hook you to an IV, drip DMT into your arm for two hours, and you’ll go have this trip, then we’ll interview you afterward.” A lot of people sign up for that.

They did it with thousands of people — it’s still an ongoing study. The kicker is, all these people have rich experiences, then get interviewed afterward, and none of the participants had any knowledge of anybody else who’d participated — they never talked before or after. Yet they all basically have the same experience: there’s this nine-foot-tall purple being with one eye that they have a conversation with, who answers all their life questions. Basically everybody runs into the same being.

So what’s going on there? If you look at that data and those reports, you have to conclude that really exists. What DMT does, apparently, is shift your frequency — it allows you to go into another dimension, stick your head in, hang out, have a conversation, and come back. That being is there, just at a different frequency — we just can’t see it. Normally you and I aren’t tuned into that channel. Think of it like channels on a television — let’s say you bought a brand-new TV that could only get one channel, no remote, no ability to change it — that’s the only thing you get to watch. But there are other channels out there — we’re just not built as humans to see them.

Touching on this same element — what is it we’re meant to know and not meant to know? If you understand the entire near-death experience — you come over from heaven, you put out this energy, and you reincarnate — well, there’s what they call a veil of forgetfulness. You have to forget everything that happens on the other side in order for this life to have any meaning. Because if you came here reincarnated and understood everything — the 300 past lives you’d already lived — your experience on this planet would be completely different. So you have to forget all of those things — it’s a forced forgetfulness.

Host: Okay, you just left that off exactly where I was moving, so I appreciate it. If we’re here to forget — which I totally agree with, it makes total sense — I can’t help but think: if I imagine myself or humans in general, kind of stepping back, if I were an alien watching our civilization evolve, I’d be very interested to see that in the last 50 years, technology has increased extremely — content like this can reach tens of thousands of people, which was much harder to do in the past. And there’s a lot more information around NDEs, spirituality, who we are — this conversation we’re having. If we’re supposed to forget everything, why is our evolution getting to this space where we need to remember, even just a little bit? I understand what you’re saying — I do believe there’s a veil, this thing we’re supposed to forget — yet here I am talking to you about it, here we are putting that information out for people. So I guess my main question is: why the change now? What are we moving into? What’s your feeling around that?

Don: So there’s really no change. What you’re experiencing is the result of the implementation and growth of technology — connectivity, the internet, YouTube, Zoom, all these technologies that are very recently available. When you put it in context of the human experience — if you put the entirety of human history, 300,000 years, on a 24-hour clock, you’re talking about the last half-second for everything you and I know: electricity, cell phones, automobiles, space shots, all this modern technology we take for granted — the last half-second of the entirety of human experience. You can’t take that last half-second and say, “This is what humans are.” No — humans are that 299-point-something thousand years of being hunter-gatherers.

Here’s one for you: if you look at ritualistic burials — my indication for when humans started believing in an afterlife is to look at ritualistic burials. We started burying people about 160,000 years ago. Prior to that, there are no burials — you don’t find complete skeletons, you don’t find things in a grave like hand tools, ornamental beads, or red ochre. We can do all this analysis on people because of a belief in an afterlife.

Now, if you look at what’s buried in the graves, you never find weapons until about 11,000 years ago. What changed was agriculture, which started about 11,000 years ago or so. Before that, if you’re a hunter-gatherer leading a tribe wandering the plains of Africa — primarily meat eaters, spears, control over fire, expert hunters — there’s herds of millions of animals, more food than you know what to do with. If some guy down the river turns out to be a problem, you just move on — you’re not going to risk anybody fighting him, you avoid the conflict. There’s no reason for conflict — on the contrary, there’s more incentive to share, cross-pollinate, intermarry, for genetic reasons they understood.

As soon as you introduce agriculture, you’ve got land ownership, crops, livestock, buildings, permanent settlements — now there’s an incentive for somebody with a sword to come in, kill you, and take it, because there’s value: take the land, take over the people, enslave them, take the plants and animals. That’s why any weapon ever buried with anybody comes with the advent of agriculture. And we’re still fighting that today — those weapons just happen to be nuclear now, and we’re fighting over the breadbasket of Europe, Ukraine. Same thing we’ve been doing for 11,000 years. It really comes down to taking resources from other groups of humans.

Host: Right, it’s really the race for technology too — everybody’s racing to have the technology, because if the information gets out that someone has it, well, who knows, it opens up a whole can of everything.

Don: You wouldn’t want to fight a war today using World War II technology, right? That’s why we spend so much money developing new technology — a better submarine, a better aircraft carrier, a better drone, better satellites and missiles — because we’re preparing for a war that hopefully never comes. And if you’re very prepared to fight that war, nobody will come at you.

Host: I’ve had a lot of people on who’ve had NDEs, but also a lot of people who talk about interdimensional beings and other things out there — we used to call it ET or alien, now there’s this other section of things. From what I’ve been told, because they’re on a different wavelength or channel, some of our weapons can somewhat reach those channels — that’s why if you look back at all these nuclear bombs going off, you see UFOs around them, that’s where I think the term “foo fighters” came from, if that’s the right term.

So my point is, if we start playing with technology beyond our own capability of understanding — we understand it, but we think it’s only affecting this earthly plane — if it’s affecting something beyond this plane, that’s when I think those dimensional situations get more involved. Because I do believe in free will, but if we’re doing damage outside of just the physical, I’d think if I were on that other side, I’d want to stop that. I understand we’re obviously trying to avoid it, but I think there are bigger powers out there putting their foot down with it too. I know that sounds maybe crazy to some, but these are just things that have come up through conversations I’ve had with other people.

Don: Well, I think you’re on the right track. I agree there are definitely things the government knows that they don’t want to tell us. There’s only so many reasons to classify things — capabilities is one of them. When stealth technology was developed, for example, it was highly classified, because a technology like stealth renders billions of dollars spent on air defense systems completely useless overnight.

So if you’re concerned about fighting a war with the Soviet Union or the Chinese or anybody else, you’re going to develop these highly advanced systems and keep them under wraps so that when you need them, you have the surprise advantage. That’s part of the game we’ve been playing for a long time — look at the race for the nuclear weapon, the Germans trying to develop it, us beating them to it and using it to end World War II — the only time nuclear weapons were used in wartime. But look at how much time, effort, and money has been spent developing, building, and improving those systems since.

Just imagine — if you were the president, and something crashes in your backyard, and you go, “Hey, that’s pretty cool, let’s reverse-engineer that — cloaking device, time travel, anti-gravity, all these cool things.” You’re not going to go on the cover of Scientific American and say, “Look what we can do” — because as soon as you do, everybody else can too. Those things are going to be held back hard, kept as that surprise sucker punch for when you absolutely need it.

Host: I agree. I’d just say — being a father with two young kids, if they’re running around being goofy and hurting each other a little, okay, I let them solve their own issues. But if I see one of my kids run out with a knife, something really damaging, I’m going to stop them. I say that because if there are energies, entities, or dimensional beings far superior to us physically, looking down at us — our little primitive ways of still killing each other, I don’t know why we’re still doing this, but that’s the human experience, that’s fine — I think the moment it starts to interfere beyond that, that’s when they’d step in. So I guess what I’m trying to say is, I think we need to be careful how far we push a lot of this, because if we push too far, we might be fighting something we don’t even know we’re fighting. I don’t want to put fear out there, I don’t want to say that’s going to happen, but I’m always thinking 10 steps ahead — if it were to go that way, what are the possibilities? I don’t know if you want to touch on that, but that’s where I was alluding to.

Don: I believe it’s perfectly possible that there are other civilizations, life forms, other planets, people who understand quantum physics and mechanics better than we do — so they can do things like travel faster than light, because in that respect we are technologically basically toddlers. They’re starting to understand more and more about the whole quantum reality of things and what’s possible. Imagine being able to ignore time and limitations on travel — if you wanted to go halfway across the universe and have a good time, bing bing, you’re there. That’s the way it is on the other side, by the way — when you cross over, there’s no limitation on time, no gravity, gravity and time don’t exist on the other side. You’re not held back by those things — Einstein was right, but only in this existence.

So if there are older, more advanced, technologically capable beings out there, I could perfectly see them showing up and going, “Oh geez, they figured out nuclear weapons, all right, we need to go there and throw a bucket of water on that a little, keep them from killing themselves.” But then again, from a strategic point of view — okay, so humans set off nuclear weapons and wipe out every living thing on the planet — from a universe point of view, you could look at that and go, “Well, the rock will be fine, give it a few billion years and life will come back.” The tectonic plates will move around, maybe you get a snowball Earth for a while, sooner or later the sun warms back up, you get green plants, then dinosaurs, who knows what evolves again. Who’s to say that hasn’t already happened many times?

When you’re looking at geological time, billions of years — whatever advanced life forms might have existed on the surface of the planet in the past, when you’re talking tectonic plates, all that evidence would have been chewed up and sent down to the magma. There’d be no evidence. It’s interesting when you look at human genetics — gene number two, for example — things occur there that should not occur, for humans specifically and no other life form, which give us the ability for this kind of thought we’re having right now: creativity, language, abstract thought, discussing these things. That’s why you don’t have squirrels and rabbits having in-depth conversations about all these possibilities.

Host: I love this. You touched on a lot there. I remember watching someone — I don’t know the full details of his experience, you watch so many — but he had an experience with interdimensional beings when he was young, beings of light from a craft, from another planet. He was told this really young, and he knew nothing about quantum physics — no scientist at all — but the way he explained it was good for people who don’t get it, because he said: they asked him, “How did you get here? It took us forever just to get to the moon.” And he said they explained it like this — imagine a really large mansion, you’ve got a front door and a back door, and you’re at the front door but want to get to the back, to the other side. But to walk through the mansion would take 20,000 years, it’s just massive. You’re not going to walk through the house — that’d take 20,000 years — and you’re not going to go around it either, because that’d take even longer. So all you do is take the front door and put it on top of the back door, and open it.

I went, “Oh, okay” — for me, I never understood that concept until it clicked: that’s all they do. And he was told this as a small child.

Don: So what you’re describing — here’s the front door, there’s the back door. If you have the ability to do that, instead of going from here to here, you just take here and put it over there.

Host: Right. Yeah, and that’s how he was told it, as a small child. I thought, wow, that would have been something to be told that young, not even understanding what it means — you wouldn’t think about that as a kid.

Don: That’s the warp drive technology — Star Trek, you’re bending time, basically bending time and riding a wave, which lets you go faster than light. That was their solution to Einstein’s limitation of the speed of light as a time limiter.

Host: So I assume there’s a chance that’s been figured out — “Warp nine, Scotty.”

Don: That’s right.

Host: That’s a whole other topic. I want to ask you, based on your research — we’ve talked about a lot regarding near-death experiences. Is there anything about NDEs right now that remains the most unresolved or controversial for you? Anything that gets you a little bit, like, “I don’t understand this aspect of it”?

Don: Well, there’s an aspect that creates more curiosity for me. People who cross over and have a very rich experience — meetings with spirit guides, ancestors they’ve known from this life or other lives — are told they can only go so far. There’s a boundary. If you cross it, there’s no coming back. So the only people we get to interview are those who went up to the boundary and decided to come back. People who went to the boundary and said, “You know, I really like it here, I don’t want to go back” — they stay. We don’t get to talk to them. The only ones we get to talk to are the ones who never crossed the boundary. There’s more there — we just don’t get to see it.

Host: That’s intriguing to me. It comes up in so many forms — people explain it differently, like, “There was this see-through glass wall and I couldn’t get through, they told me if I go through, I can’t come back.” The word I’ve settled on is “the boundary,” and it seems to be a recurring concept.

Now, there’s a lot of people who have very brief, quick NDEs — barely time to get out of their body, usually in a medical setting, revived and brought back quickly. They don’t have that long, deep experience. Other people get to go to all the corners of the other side and report back.

On my show, I’m always trying to play different parts — not just sitting on the belief side of everything, but trying to look at it like someone questioning the whole NDE experience, telling myself we just turn to dust and that’s the end. I’d say to myself, well, maybe that boundary is just part of the brain’s way of — we get to that point, and if we cross it, yeah, we’re dead, we’re gone, end of it, like we all assume. Do you think there’s anything to that, or is there just too much evidence? Because I have people who tell me they were in the hospital, and the next thing they know they’re with their Aunt Betty while she’s sewing, and two months later it’s verified Aunt Betty was doing that exact thing in a completely different location. That doesn’t square with it just being the brain shutting down and giving us a nice experience. I want to know your thoughts on that.

Don: There’s an entire chapter in my book called “The Science of Denial.” Medical professionals, doctors, and scientists focus completely on studying the body — using explanations like not enough oxygen, too much carbon dioxide, hormones, the body releasing chemicals as it’s dying, a last-minute survival mechanism. You can approach the subject that way if you’re only looking at the body — but there are limitations to that. It’s like having an AM/FM radio sitting on your table, and I smash it with a hammer and it stops working, and then I say, “Okay, the radio signal never existed.” That’s insane — you just don’t understand how it’s working.

That’s what happens — the human body, the “meat sack” as I like to call it, is at some moment no longer capable of supporting life — heart attack, electric shock, drowning, any number of ways you might die — and then for whatever reason you come back and resume life on this planet. Doctors look at that, and what you’re describing are called veridical experiences, where you travel, even to another location.

There was a guy out in his front yard mowing the lawn who had a heart attack, while his wife and grandchildren were upstairs in the back of the house with no idea what was going on. He died, went up there, and was able to observe his wife getting the kids ready to go shopping — these conversations, this kid did that, that kid did this, one put on the red shirt — he described it all in detail, while his body was laying dead in the front yard. A neighbor found him, called an ambulance, they brought him back. These things are not just common — they’re ridiculously common, and ridiculously consistent: when you die and leave your body, there are no restrictions on travel, you can go anywhere just by thinking about it.

People commonly stay in a hospital setting and go down the hallway, listening in on a conversation between a doctor they’ve never met and a loved one concerned about the patient. The doctor says, “Don’t get your hopes up, I don’t think she’s going to make it through the night” — completely unaware that down the hall and around the corner, she’s flatlined and having the out-of-body experience, listening in, and is able to describe it in detail afterward.

There was another one where a woman had died, and they’re doing the code, everybody comes in trying to bring her back, including a doctor not normally part of her care. She’s out of her body up near the ceiling, looking down. They bring her back to life, and the first guy she sees when she wakes up is this doctor. She says, “Oh, hi Dr. Smith.” He says, “How do you know me?” “You’re the guy who worked on me and brought me back.” “How do you know that?” “I saw the whole thing.” “That’s impossible.” “Really? I saw you from behind, and I know you have a bald spot.” She’d seen the back of his head while up near the ceiling — something he couldn’t have known she’d seen. Go ahead, explain that one, doc.

These things are inexplicable — they should be impossible. That’s why I call it the science of denial: you’re trying to use science to deny something the evidence — and again, I’m only talking about the data, what people tell me, what people report — supports.

I actually developed a computer algorithm verification method. I can take a transcript, a story, a written account, drop the text into this thing, and it scores it from 1 to 100 — a veridity score, essentially how many elements of a normal, regular near-death experience it contains. The highest score I’ve ever gotten is a 94, the lowest was a 12. If someone scores a 12, it’s kind of like going to a college exam, writing your name at the top, and everything else doesn’t line up with what everybody else says about NDEs. Someone scoring in the 70s or a 94 — when you talk to those people afterward, they’ll say, “Oh, I never realized this kind of thing occurred” — without leading them to the answer, you find they just left things out in their original telling, as a normal course of conversation.

Host: Right, yeah, a lot of people leave things out, don’t tell the whole experience. A lot of people wait 50, 60 years to talk about it.

Don: That’s out of fear. When I grew up in the ’70s, if Uncle Lou had a heart attack and came back talking about seeing God, people would say, “Dude, Uncle Louie went a little loopy” — the heart attack got his head too. People were afraid to talk about this stuff. But nowadays, because of modern medicine and growing acceptance of this field of study, it’s just more normal — more people are talking about it without fear. Also, later in life, when you’re 70 or 80, you really don’t care what people think anymore — you stop caring.

Host: You mentioned the “Science of Denial” chapter — I’d consider that like a skeptic chapter, which is nice to have in a book, so people with different mindsets can find their place in it. What’s the name of the book you have?

Don: It’s called You’re Going to Die Someday, Right? Near-Death Experiences Reveal What Happens Next. That’s the book.

Host: Perfect. It’s actually on Amazon and “books by” — it basically takes the near-death experience, explains who I am and where I’m coming from, and the steps you go through in an NDE. The way it’s set up, if you’re interested in any particular topic — say you’re really interested in manifestation, which people call prayer — you can jump ahead to that chapter, you don’t have to read it in order. If something calls to you, jump ahead.

Host: That’s interesting. Again, because you’re approaching this from a sequence of data and analysis — I hate to keep going back to it, but the biggest thing I’ve gotten from talking to you today is that you didn’t approach this from any type of bias, didn’t approach it from your own belief systems. I’m sure things bleed through a little for anybody, if we’re human, but for the most part you zone in, get the data, and use that to conclude. Am I right to say it like that?

Don: It’s actually more than that. I seek out criticism. I seek out someone who’s going to poke a hole in my theory — people who go, “What about this, what about that?” — and if it’s something I hadn’t contemplated, well, then there’s a hole in my process I need to look at, something interesting to explore further. I don’t take it as a challenge — I’m not a tenured professor at a college who has to defend my paper, defend my PhD, who has to publish or perish. I don’t care what people think — it doesn’t even hit my radar. That’s why I have zero fear jumping both feet into the middle of an orthodox-atheist Facebook group with 500,000 members spending all day bashing religion. I’m like, “Guys, this is kind of where all these concepts come from.” And by the way — even if you’re an orthodox atheist, when you die, you’re going to have that near-death experience just like everybody else.

Host: Exactly. And I also notice a lot of people will scrutinize and tear down religion — I understand why, I get the wise reasons for it. But the problem I have with it is, like you said, I have people who’ve had NDEs with no religious affinity whatsoever — nothing — yet they have an aspect in their NDE that you’d think was taught through some religious context, whether it’s an entity that gives them what we’d call Christ consciousness, or just something that aligns with what religions are trying to say.

Don: Remember the historical aspect — that entire 300,000 years of human experience with near-death experiences, less frequent because there was no modern medicine, but they still occurred, and those stories were told around campfires for hundreds of thousands of years. That’s why you wake up one day and realize basically every human on the planet believes in an afterlife, believes in the soul, believes in God, believes in ancestors in heaven — these concepts aren’t new. They rained down on humanity over hundreds of thousands of years, in the form of near-death experiences, one at a time, forever, and it just became part of the human experience.

Host: Yeah, absolutely — that’s the core thesis of the book, and likely what’s happened with the things around religions over time is that it pushes down that meaning. Obviously — and that’s a whole other episode — wars have been started over religious things, there’s a lot of feeling around that, which is why I understand the pushback.

Okay, I’ve loved this conversation. I want to come around and ask you the one main question I ask all my NDE-ers — answer it however long you want, just what you’ve concluded. You’ve talked to or read about people who’ve had these experiences, and I’m sure a lot of them have told you it was a beautiful experience, that they didn’t want to leave — in fact, when they came back and opened their eyes, they were angry to be back, felt pushed back from God, like, “Why did I get thrown back here?” Not everybody, but it comes up. And when you’re over there, there’s this completely expansive, beautiful feeling. So if that’s the case, why would we do this — why would we come here, with all the hurt, the wars, the chronic illness? What are we doing? What’s the main drive and purpose for why we come here?

Don: So — the meaning of life. Basically, the reason we come here is to grow, so you continue to come back, and whatever you learn from your last incarnation, you learn more from your next, and you continue having these life experiences on the planet until — I assume — there’s really nothing left to learn. You’ve matured to a point where you’ve got it all figured out, and then I think you graduate to the elements of being a spirit guide, or what some people would call an angel, that kind of energy. There’s nothing left for you to learn, so you become that kind of entity.

The other thing that’s interesting — when people cross over and go to the garden setting to meet the ancestors, they’ll have long, in-depth conversations with plants, trees, grass, bugs, all of it, and come to realize that we share two things with everything else alive on the planet: that we’re both alive, and that we’re both going to die someday. And that life energy comes from the same source. So maybe the tree huggers are onto something — maybe the trees like it too, you know? It’s not that far out from what the data indicates. Again, this is what the data tells me — I’m not making this stuff up.

Host: I appreciate you answering that. A lot of times I hear, “We come here to grow through incarnations, learn from previous life cycles,” those types of things. The part I’m always — maybe because I’m a truth seeker — trying to find more info, more reasoning, is: okay, but what’s the goal? When you’re a child, you grow up, become a teenager, and you go, “When I grow up I’m going to get a job, I’m going to be a firefighter.” You set goals as a human. I’d assume if we are some physical, three-dimensional expression of what we really are — our spirit body, that part of God — there would be a goal in mind, in some general sense. And I’d go, well, where are we going?

So as soon as you mentioned we may graduate to an angelic entity or some other sense of what we are — I can’t confirm that, none of us can, because we don’t cross over to find out, but those tidbits of information are given during an NDE. We can’t confirm it, no one’s crossed over and come back to say, “You did it, now you get to become an angel and go help people.” We don’t know that, but I’d think there’s some kind of source of purpose. And I love how you mentioned earlier the deathbed entity with that sense of humor — that’s the first time someone’s said it like that, where I’ve thought, “Oh yeah, I’ve had maybe five or more NDE guests tell me something like that.” Why are we having the same thing? Well, probably because there’s some type of truth to that existence.

Don: Sure.

Host: Yeah, I appreciate you answering it that way. This has been a really good talk. I’ll put all your information about your book in the show notes — it’s one book you currently have, right?

Don: Yeah, it’s one book. You can get it as a paperback or on Amazon, or on “books by” — I’ll send you the links if you’re interested.

Host: I’m personally interested, because you’ve been doing the same thing I’ve been doing — I’ve just been doing it in a podcast format, but it’s turned into — I sometimes say, “Hey, I’m an NDE researcher too,” because when you’re given enough information, it starts to become verifiable — repetitive pieces of information and data come through, and you go, okay. Like I said, I have four or five “stars” you’ve mentioned where I know you haven’t had an NDE, but you’ve said things I didn’t know about — I’ve never talked to those specific people, but you described those exact experiences, and I went, “Yep, heard that one.”

Don: That’s the advantage I have — the data set I can review is everything on the internet related to NDEs, globally, in any language. The conclusion I draw is that the same thing happens to everybody, no matter what — we talked about the maturation or improvement of the soul over time, the idea of karma and nirvana, which grows out of Jainism, Buddhism, Hinduism — the idea that the reason we’re doing this is to improve the soul over time and cycle up. That’s part of what some of the good-franchise religions get right.

Host: Last question for you, just to leave it with the audience. What’s a positive message you’ve come to understand through your own research? Has it opened up your own ideas of your own existence, your own purpose, helped you grow spiritually — is there anything you can give people as a final message?

Don: Absolutely. I have completely changed as a human being, and the way I conduct my life, as a result of looking at all these hundreds of thousands or millions of near-death experiences, comparing and contrasting them, boiling them down to their raw essence. I used to get all wrapped up in the news and the events of the day — what’s going on, oh my god, blah blah blah. Now I look out my window — I’m up on the side of a mountain, I can see the entire Hudson Valley from my back deck — and if I don’t see smoke anywhere, I don’t care. It doesn’t affect me personally. Why would I turn on some TV channel and listen to one spin or another, get emotionally wrapped up in whatever they’re trying to get me spun up about? Why would I subject myself to that?

The other significant change — every single time I leave the house to do anything, even just getting a haircut or going to the grocery store, I go out of my way, every day, with every human interaction, to leave that person smiling, happy, laughing, cheerful — to treat everybody with caring, compassion, love, respect, and consideration, because who knows, maybe that person is having a bad day and all they need is somebody to take that moment they normally wouldn’t.

As an example: the other day I had a medical appointment, saw the doctor I needed to see, finished up, and was checking out. The woman checking me out was upset in some way — I could tell, her hands were shaking, her eyes were tearing up, something was going on. So I just asked her, “Are you okay?” She looked at me, reached over for a Kleenex, and was crying.

I finished my appointment, left the building, and right next door in the same strip mall there was a pharmacy. We were coming up on Valentine’s Day, so I went in and bought a little plush stuffed doll with something like “hang in there” written on it — cost five or six bucks. I walked back in, and she was talking to another patient, so I stood aside and waited for that to finish. Then I walked up and said, “Hey, I don’t know what’s going on, but I think you need this,” and gave her the thing. She just lost it.

I still to this day don’t know what was going on, but she didn’t just hold my hand, she squeezed it, and said, “Thank you so much, you have no idea.” I said, “Well, I just hope you have a better day,” and moved on.

That’s not something I would have done before. If I’d noticed she was upset, having a bad day, there’s no way I would have stopped what I was doing to go out of my way to try to make her feel better. So now I look for those opportunities — the opposite of selfish. If I can find somebody having a bad day and just make them smile, that’s what I do, because it takes all the pressure and stress off of me and everybody else, and just makes the world a better place. It’s a small thing, but that’s what I got out of all this.

Host: No, I love that message, and I think it’s something we should all take from this — I’ve had a few of those moments too. It makes you feel good to see you can make a difference in someone’s life, and that’s what we’re supposed to be doing.

How do people get in contact with you, Don? Do you have a website, or just email?

Don: The website is winnernde.com. My email is donwinner@winnernde.com.

Host: Well, I appreciate you being on today, and I’m sure the audience will too.

Don: What I need is reviews for the book — because if you’re a new author without a following, getting a book off the ground is really, really hard. Over 99% of people think you write a book, get it published on Amazon, and you’re done. That’s not the case — you need that social traction, where people have read the book, left a review, said, “Hey, I like it,” or whatever they have to say about it. So I’d request: if you read the book and like it, please leave a review. That would help me.

Host: Oh, I can completely attest to that — same thing with YouTube videos. If you don’t leave comments and get involved, the algorithm doesn’t care, even if it’s the best video anyone’s ever made, it won’t get pushed if people don’t engage. So I’d also suggest people leave comments and ask questions, and I’m sure Don will jump on and answer them.

I really appreciate having you on. To the audience: please continue to like, share, and subscribe to The Soul Inspired, check out Don’s book, and leave a review. Any questions you have for him, he’d be happy to answer. Thank you so much for coming on the show today, I really appreciate it.

Don: Thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate it as well.

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[End of interview]